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JOHN RUSKIN 

SOCIAL REFORMER 



JOHN RUSKIN 

SOCIAL REFORMER 



BY 

J. A. HOBSON. 




BOSTON * ' 

DANA ESTES & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



PK 52.67 



o«p»v 2 



Copyright, 1898 
By Dana Estes & Company 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 







OCT 4- 1888 )) 



TWO COPIES RECFIVFD 

Colonial Presa 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface v 

I. Formative Influences of Early Life . . 11 

II. From Art to Social Reform .... 29 

III. The Indictment of Current Political 

Economy 69 

IV. Mr. Ruskin's Theory of Social Economics 103 
V. Flaws in the Science and Practice of 

Modern Industry 122 

VI. The Competitive System .... 143 

VII. The True Social Order 169 

VIII. Socialism and Aristocracy .... 192 

IX. Machinery and Industrial Towns . . 227 

X. Education 250 

XL Woman's Place and Education . . . 285 
XII. Industrial Experiments — The Guild of 

St. George 296 

XIII. Summary of Mr. Rusrtn's Work and Influ- 
ence 324 

Appendix 341 

Index 353 



PREFACE. 



A book which professes to be primarily an exposition 
of Mr. Ruskin's social teaching may seem at first sight 
to be needless and unprofitable. No master of impas- 
sioned prose has endowed his writings with more per- 
spicuity of meaning and more force of utterance, or 
used a fuller liberty of reiteration in placing his chief 
thoughts before the reading public. And yet these 
very qualities of brilliance and amplitude have helped 
to hide from many the supreme value of Mr. Ruskin's 
criticism of life, especially in reference to social reform, 
by giving too great emphasis and attractiveness to un- 
related individual thoughts, set in single jewelled sen- 
tences, or in purple patches, and by thus concealing 
the consistency of thought and feeling which underlay 
and gave intellectual unity and order to his work. 
Though Mr. Ruskin, like Matthew Arnold, would prob- 
ably disclaim the title of a system-maker, as implying 
too mechanical a conception of his intellectual life, and 
though his mode of composition seldom leans towards 
severity of arrangement, yet no great modern thinker 
exhibits in his writings a more definite and conscious 
adjustment of ideas, both in the order of their growth 
and in the maintenance of their relations towards one 
another. 

Mr. Ruskin will rank as the greatest social teacher 



VI PREFACE. 

of his age, not merely because he has told the largest 
number of important truths upon the largest variety of 
vital matters, in language of penetrative force, but 
because he has made the most powerful and the most 
felicitous attempt to grasp and to express, as a com- 
prehensive whole, the needs of a human society and 
the processes of social reform. To assert that he has 
attained or even approached complete success, either in 
his delineation of the social ideal, or in his estimate of 
particular measures and movements of progress, would 
be to prefer a foolish claim. But it may be justly said 
that he has done more than any other Englishman to 
compel people to realise the nature of the social problem 
in its wider related issues affecting every department 
of work and life, and to enforce the supreme moral 
obligation of confronting it. 

In seeking to mark this unity and consistency of 
conscious design in Mr. Ruskin's work, and, at the same 
time, to furnish a critical estimate of the whole and of 
the parts, I shall run the risk of offending some by 
tedium, and others by the presumption which attaches 
to the most cautious censorship of the great. In draw- 
ing together and imposing argumentative order upon 
thoughts which flit self-poised and with bright irrespon- \ 
sibility among the pages of Mr. Ruskin's brilliantly 
discursive books, I shall seem to some to be guilty of 
literary desecration. My defence must be that I am | 
claiming for Mr. Ruskin, as the chief among his virtues, . 
one which has not yet been admitted save by a small 
section of his numerous readers, the distinction of being 
a philosophic thinker upon the nature and modes of 
social progress, particularly on its economic side. 



PREFACE. vil 

The very qualities which have pleased the body of 
his readers most, the brilliant word-painting (which he 
has vainly repudiated), the superb freedom of passionate 
utterance in praise and blame, the immense variety of 
swift and telling illustration, the gifts of rhetorical 
exaggeration which he employs, have done him this 
injury with sober-minded thinkers of a more practical 
or scientific turn, that they have concealed the close 
and accurate texture of his deeper thought. Thus the 
selfish interests and the false passions which he so con- 
stantly and bitterly assailed have, in part at any rate, 
succeeded in persuading large sections of the thinking 
world that, while Mr. Ruskin is a valuable art-critic 
and a brilliant litterateur, he has no claim to serious 
consideration as an economist and a thinker upon social 
reform. Particular phrases and judgments have been 
distorted and abused, the grossest misrepresentations of 
a general character have been employed, in order either 
to pretend that Mr. Ruskin did not really mean what he 
has plainly said, or that his fundamental notions and 
valuations are too unsubstantial to deserve the attention 
of thoughtful practical reformers. This is the common 
price paid by literary genius to the dull-witted multitude, 
who have always been easily persuaded that a man who 
writes well cannot think clearly or deeply. 

Some even among his lovers and admirers may hold 
their master to blame for a certain perverse ingenuity of 
waywardness in the intentional disorder of his reasoning. 
That he has in fact carried this disorder so far as to 
hide from many the full appreciation of his logic is my 
chief excuse for this work. 

To crib, cabin, and confine in a dull array of formal 



Vlll PREFACE. 

propositions the rich exuberance of Mr. Ruskin's thought 
would be a needless injury. This I have endeavoured 
to avoid. But, however one may handle so delicate a 
writer for purposes of exposition, some considerable loss 
of the finer flavour of his work is unavoidable. As we 
draw together from diverse quarters the compact order 
of his thought, the spell of his eloquence is broken, the 
all-pervasive charm of his rich free utterance is dissi- 
pated. To some it may seem that the establishment of 
a sound logical reputation is no adequate compensation 
for such a loss. My answer is that every reader who 
would appraise his work aright, in all its breadth and 
fullness, must in some fashion do for himself this work 
of formal analysis and synthesis, must seek a wholeness 
and a harmony in Mr. Ruskin's art of life. This cen- 
tral fire of inspiration which gives vitality to all his 
works, this art of life, issuing as it does from his 
supreme sense of spiritual brotherhood, is identical with 
the passion of social reform, which is the aspect of his 
work that here engages us. Some account of the out- 
ward circumstances of his life, and of the more dis- 
tinctively artistic and literary interests which absorbed 
much of his time and attention, is here given. But 
neither biography nor art philosophy is treated for its 
own intrinsic interest, but only in so far as it helps to 
explain, historically or logically, the order and nature of 
his social teaching. My design is to render some assist- 
ance to those who are disposed to admit the validity of 
the claim which Mr. Ruskin has made to be first and 
above all else a Political Economist, and who are will- 
ing to give careful consideration alike to the strictures 
he has passed upon current economic theory and prac- 



PREFACE. IX 

tice, and to the schemes of social and industrial re- 
construction which he has advocated with zeal and 
persistency for over thirty years. 

The main part of this book is devoted to a statement 
and a vindication of Mr. Ruskin's claim to have placed 
Political Economy upon a sounder scientific and ethical 
foundation than it had hitherto possessed, and to have 
built upon that foundation an ideal of a prosperous human 
society. The particular qualities and defects of Mr. 
Ruskin's criticism and constructive policy are examined 
in some detail, his repudiation of democratic ideas and 
institutions receiving special attention. The important 
contribution which he made to educational theories and 
experiments, and its bearing upon the wider social 
polity, are separately discussed, and chapters are ac- 
corded to certain themes, such as his attitude towards 
machinery and his view of the position of woman, which 
seem to demand separate treatment. Finally, some 
account is given of the constitution of the Society and 
Guild of St. George, and of the industrial and educa- 
tional experiments either directly associated with the 
Guild or animated by the spirit of Mr. Ruskin's social 
teaching. 

For many of the biographical facts I wish to express 
my indebtedness to the admirable work of Mr. Colling- 
wood, " Life and Work of John Ruskin." 

I have also to acknowledge the kindness and courtesy 
of Mr. Ruskin, and of Messrs. George Allen & Son, in 
permitting me the use of copious excerpts from Mr. 
Ruskin's published works. 

J. A. Hobson. 



JOHN RUSKIN. 



CHAPTER I. 

FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 

§ 1. "An entirely honest merchant" and his wife. §2. First 
impressions from literature and art. § 3. Education of nature 
and of books. § 4. A home-keeping youth — Dawn of the 
literary faculty. § 5. Undergraduate days at Oxford. 

§ 1. Only those who are familiar with John Ruskin's 
estimate of the mercantile life and of the art of home- 
keeping can understand the full significance of the 
phrases in which he summed up the distinctive and 
essential virtues of his parentage. The first great " for- 
mative influence" in his life was the fact that he was 
the son of " an entirely honest merchant " and of " a 
consummate housewife." 

Scotch blood entered his veins from both parents, 
with some infusion of the Galloway Celt. Those who 
attach importance to the powers of "race" as deter- 
minants of individual character and work may find an 
interest in tracing the Celtic qualities in Mr. Ruskin's 
art and literature, and will attribute to this source the 
vivid imagination and the impulsiveness which give 
such brilliant colour to his social criticism. A surer 

11 



12 JOHN BUS KIN. 

influence was exercised by the Jacobite traditions which 
prevailed for generations among his ancestors, and 
which in Scotland often coalesced with a deep enduring 
strain of evangelical religious sentiment. John James 
Ruskin and his cousin-wife, when they came South, in 
1809, brought with them in powerful measure the 
qualities of grit and foresight, the commercial and 
intellectual acquisitiveness which have brought so many 
of the North Britons to the front in the struggle of life. 
The two great departments of business and home-life 
were ordered by them with equal diligence and success. 
Mr. Ruskin contributed the brains and energy to a great 
wine business with a famous reputation for high-class 
" sherry." " Entire honesty " he found to be an excel- 
lent policy, for he soon began to amass considerable 
wealth, which enabled him to satisfy, with an ample 
margin, all the demands of a luxurious home and a 
dignified social position. The status of a successful 
wine-merchant, even in an age when " trade " was less 
irreproachable in its respectability than now, was always 
good, being that of a responsible adviser to the aris- 
tocracy and gentry in one of the most important and 
critical departments of gentlemanly conduct — the selec- 
tion of their wine. This fact, more than any other, 
enabled the wine-trade, in its upper grade, to escape 
some of the demoralising effects of excessive competition, 
which have broken down the responsibility of a merchant 
to his " customers" in most trades. 

Though closely devoted to his business, Mr. Ruskin, 
however, was never absorbed in it. Having received 
a sound and liberal education in Edinburgh, he enjoyed 
ample leisure and means for cultivating literary and 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 13 

artistic tastes, and the reading aloud of good books 
and the collection and study of pictures form a large 
part of the early recollections of his son. Mrs. Ruskin 
seems to have been the stronger character of the two, 
determining with somewhat autocratic power all the 
larger issues, and exercising a constant and minute 
supervision over the early life and conduct of her only 
child. Her nature, as revealed to us in many scattered 
passages of John Ruskin' s books, is too acutely positive, 
too unyielding in its power, to be very prepossessing, 
seeking and winning more respect and admiration than 
affection. As we read the story of his childhood, we 
feel his mother's " principles " are too obtrusive to be 
wholly pleasing or wholly profitable. " My mother's 
general principles of first treatment were, to guard me 
with steady watchfulness from all possible pain or dan- 
ger ; and for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, 
provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome." * The 
words, " as I liked," however, require serious qualifica- 
tion, for " toys " were forbidden ; and a sorrowful story 
is told of a carnally-minded aunt who gave the baby a 
splendid Punch and Judy, which was promptly confis- 
cated by his mother, who said, " ' It was not right that I 
should have them,' and I never saw them again." Old- 
fashioned views about the place of punishment in educa- 
tion prevailed in the Ruskin household. " I was always 
summarily whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or 
tumbled on the stairs." When it is added that her earli- 
est conception of her special duty in education took the 
form of forcing John to acquire long chapters of the 
Bible with perfect verbal accuracy every morning, and 
1 Jlors, Letter li. (iii. 38). 



14 JOHN BUSKIN. 

to read the book right through, once a year at least, \ 
from Genesis to the Apocalypse, every syllable, at a time 
when no skill of interpretation in the teacher and no 
precocity in the pupil could have imparted a right under- 
standing of many portions, the opinion we form of her 
judgment and discretion is not too favourable. 

But the imaginative reconstruction of a personality 
from episodes is seldom reliable, and, in the case of Mr. 
Ruskin's mother, evidently gives a most unjustly biassed 
view. The fuller and more general picture is that of a 
singularly peaceful and gentle home, parents closely at- 
tached to one another, and in ever kind and anxious sympa- 
thy with all that made for the interest and welfare of their 
child. The strong evangelical leanings of the mother 
admitted the relaxations of " a lighter self " capable of a 
free and honest enjoyment even of the stories of Fielding 
and Sterne, which Mr. Ruskin's father, a devoted student 
of literary masterpieces, read aloud in the evenings. 

§ 2. This family life was self-centred to an unusual 
extent ; and the extreme care which both parents took of 
their boy kept him from many of the childish interests 
which might have thrown him freely amongst other 
children and have widened the area of child-life. As we 
read his early story we are reminded of the title he has 
given to one of his own books, " Hortus Inclusus." To 
the physical care bestowed upon him by his mother, John, » 
with his delicate constitution and mental precocity, owed 
very much. To the early training he received in litera- 
ture and art he owed still more. Too much is often 
made " of books that have influenced me." But no care- 
ful student of Mr. Ruskin can fail to see the extraor- ' 
dinarily powerful impact upon his sensitive imagination 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 15 



and his retentive memory of the " great books " which 
taught him his earliest wider lessons of life and humanity. 
The Bible, Sir Walter Scott, Homer (in Pope's version) 
not only formed his early outlook upon life and history, 
but stored his childish mind with images and words 
which made an imperishable impression upon his literary 
work. 

Art, too, crept early into his life, for his father was 
not merely a collector but an amateur painter of deli- 
cate taste, and pictures and engravings were objects of 
serious interest to him. The somewhat austere habits 
of this Scottish household seem to have admitted a 
good deal of material comfort which, under the pressure 
of a rapidly expanding income, included many expen- 
sive luxuries, though never degenerating into show or 
I magnificence. 

Born in London, John Ruskin was yet no city-bred 
boy. In 1824, when he was five years old, the family 
moved to a comfortable mansion in Heme Hill, then a 
charming rural spot, upon which the speculative builder 
had not begun to lay unholy hands. Here the Ruskins 
kept almost entirely to themselves, rarely entertaining, 
never "entering society," giving their son John the 
best of everything, as they understood it, in physical 
and mental culture. In such an atmosphere, fenced 
round by parental solicitude, there was indeed grave 
danger lest a sensitive, precocious child might develop 
into a portentous prig. That he escaped this fate must 
in part be imputed to his native modesty, and to the 
powerful early interests in books, art, and nature which 
took him outside of himself. 

§ 3. Had the elder Mr. Ruskin been possessed by that 



16 JOHN BUSKIN. 

same genius of mis-education which was driving another 
Scottish father 1 to attempt the ruin of another distin- 
guished son, it would have gone hard with John Ruskin. 
Fortunately, the strict physical regimen of young Ruskin 
was mitigated by abundance of free leisure, that " broad 
margin to life " which is so essential to healthy growth. 
From books and the routine of a too carefully ordered 
home, John found wholesome relief in the beauties 
of Nature, which were the objects of his earliest and 
most abiding passion. The woods and streams and 
trees in the charming country round Dulwich became 
his familiar friends, and their free beauty formed a 
healthy counterpoise to the "luxury and formalism" 
which in later years he recognised as chief dangers of 
his early years. Moreover, each summer, the peaceful 
monotony of residence at Heme Hill was broken by 
long and delightful travels, in which the child became 
familiar with all the varied scenery of his native land. 
There is an irresistible quaintness in the picture of little 
John packed away in the post-chaise with father and 
mother, leisurely traversing England and Scotland as 
they drove from one stately home to another, to take 
orders for sherry. Mr. Ruskin was his own traveller, 
and worked in pleasure and business most successfully. 
It was indeed a splendid education for such a child, who 
saw all the famous sights, the cities, cathedrals, rivers, 
mountains, castles of his native land. His first love, he 
tells us, was for castles and ruins, not for pictures ; that 
came afterwards. These travels, to be supplemented 
later by Continental journeys, fastened the realities of 
history upon his imagination, and early reflections and 
1 James Mill. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 17 

I judgments began to stir his childish mind. From 
I Homer and Scott he had already gained "strange 
I ideas about kings," and in " Fors Clavigera" * he tells 
jhow "a painful wonder soon arose in my child-mind 
why the castles should now be always empty. Dark 
i yearning took hold of me for a kind of Restoration" 
— a seedling of the later hero-worship and new feudal- 
ism which were to figure so strongly in his scheme of 
social reform. 

Too much, however, must not be made of these 
dim foreshadowings. Ruskin's early love was the pure 
romantic passion for beautiful scenery and historic asso- 
ciations. This soon took further shape in the beginnings 
of scientific curiosity. Not content with a " superficial 
sentiment," derived from the " grandeur " of mountains, 
he wished to know about them, became a searcher into 
causes. Mountains thus led him to mineralogy and 
physical geography, and one by one other branches of 
the natural sciences began to interest him, and he sought 
to give more definite meaning to the rivers, the clouds, 
trees, and all the objects of the external world. 

This early scientific spirit belongs to the " analytic " 
talent which Mr. Ruskin in manhood has always justly 
claimed as his most distinctive gift. His was never a 
mere delicately receptive mind ; to accurate sensation he 
added this power of analysis and the attendant faculty 
of creative imagination. Those, however, who regard 
him distinctively as of a poetical imaginative nature 
have no justification for this view. Of the faculties 
just named, the creative imagination was always 
weaker than the faculties of observation and analysis, 
1 Fors, Letter x. (i. 193). 



18 JOHN BUSKIN. 

§ 4. Later in life Mr. Ruskin brought this rare ana-, 
lytic power to bear upon the moral education of his 
early life. Its virtues and defects are clearly and justly: 
indicated by him. Peace, obedience, and faith were the 
moral atmosphere he breathed ; truth, honesty, and per-; 
feet exactitude of conduct were taught in the example; 
of his parents ; the foundation of justice and considera- 
tion for others was laid in his home life. It was a safe; 
but hardly a stimulating moral atmosphere. It fur- 
nished, he tells us, " nothing to love," and " nothing to! 
endure : " the " judgment of right and wrong and power I 
of independent action were left wholly undeveloped." 1 
Nor was any corrective to this somewhat enervating 
calm furnished by school life. Except for a brief season 
in a small day-school, his " education " was conducted 
by private tutors under the same close parental care. 
The best "individual attention" of skilled teachers was 
secured for him both in the ordinary branches of learn- 1 
ing and in art. It is impossible to assess the gain and 
loss arising from this policy of home education. On the ( 
whole, however, it is probably a matter for congratula- 
tion that young Ruskin escaped the hardening ordeal of 
a great public school at a time before modern notions 
of humanity had softened the asperities of mechanical 
discipline. Brutal injustice is ill compensated by a rough 
sense of comradeship ; and to thrust into the educational \ 
cock-pit a sensitive nature such as Ruskin's in order 
that he might " find his level," and " have the nonsense 
knocked out of him," was a fatuous policy, which the; 
good sense and affection of his parents forbade them to 
entertain. Thus he escaped the fate of being turned out 
1 Fors, Letter liv. (iii. 109) v 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 19 

of an educational factory at nineteen, a "man of the 
world " with fixed habits, ideas, and associations. 

The result of excessive home-keeping was a lack of 
comradeship in work and play, and a premature exces- 
sive cultivation of the arts of self-expression in litera- 
ture. There was none of the coercive over-pressure 
which went near to ruin J. S. Mill. But the solitary 
leisure of childhood awakened too early and too rapidly 
the thirst for literary expression. At six years old 
" graphomania " seized him ; even before he had learned 
to write he taught himself to copy print, and the read- 
ing and making of books became his constant passion. 
Fiction with long descriptive passages and fraught with 
morals, in imitation of an early favourite, Miss Edge- 
worth, sometimes interspersed with dips into "hy- 
draulics, pneumatics, acoustics, electricity, astronomy, 
mineralogy," were his earliest products. But from his 
eighth year the passion for metre and rhyme gained 
such a hold that he spent most of his leisure in com- 
posing poems, not wholly unambitious in their scope, 
as the title of one begun in his ninth year indicates, 
" Eudosia : a Poem of the Universe." As he advanced 
in boyhood, the diligent habit of putting into literary 
form, chiefly poetic, a close record of impressions and 
thoughts never quitted him. Even when much time was 
of necessity accorded to lessons, this activity did not 
much abate. The constant strain of mental energy 
does not seem to have been seriously discouraged by 
his parents, though it was undoubtedly the formation 
of a habit of restless intellectuality fraught with grave 
consequences in his later life. 

Thus compassed in boyhood by all the luxuries of an 



20 JOHN liUSEIN. 

upper middle-class home, where wealth was visibly swell- 
ing, enjoying the best books, the choicest art, the most 
interesting travels, picked teachers, and the constant 
care of devoted parents, Ruskin grew up to manhood. 
This tranquillity was but once subjected to serious dis- 
turbance, when an early attachment to a sweet young 
visitor, daughter of his father's French partner, was 
nipped in the bud by his discreet parents, who discovered 
with no slight alarm that their young prodigy, whom 
they destined for the Church, with secret hopes that he 
would one day be a bishop, was intending to pledge his 
affections to a Roman Catholic ! This severance was 
John Ruskin's first taste of deep sorrow, and his suffer- 
ings of body and mind testified to the unusual intensity 
of his emotional nature. 

Among the many varied interests of boyhood — art, 
literature, science, travels, history — we find no distinct 
traces of any gathering of moral and intellectual forces 
of criticism which took the direction of social reform. 
Heme Hill was no rallying-place for those statesmen 
and economists whose earnest projects stirred the en- 
thusiasm and exercised the understanding of young 
John Mill, who was to be Mr. Ruskin's protagonist in 
the field of social politics. His father, content with the 
political philosophy of Homer and Scott, stood rooted in 
a Toryism so firm and simple that the gathering clouds 
in the political horizon caused him neither interest nor 
fear. His son pithily sums up this attitude, describing 
him as " utterly hating Radicals and devoted to the 
House of Lords." x Though England was passing through 

1 See this passage, " On the Old Koad," vol. i., p. 11, for an in- 
teresting vignette of the elder Kuskin. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 21 

the most critical phase of her modern political history 
in the struggle of the reform period, there is scarce a 
mention of politics in the full and free reminiscences of 
the home at Heme Hill. Public events, unless of a 
specially literary or artistic character, scarcely found 
entrance to this peaceful household. 

The few visitors who penetrated this " self-engrossed 
quiet " were, with the exception of two or three artists, 
all business acquaintances, whose conversation hardly 
contributed to broaden the social views of the boy. Yet 
from this source some early enlightenment regarding 
the nature of the business world seems to have come 
upon young Ruskin, for he tells us in " Prseterita" how 
from these business dinners he formed " an extremely low 
estimate of the commercial mind as such." 1 Nor did the 
outer world supply what was needed for social education. 
A rich London suburb is perhaps the least favourable soil 
for the cultivation of genuine social sympathies. The 
Ruskins, moreover, appeared to have had but slight inter- 
course with neighbours, rich or poor. Neither theatre- 
going nor other public entertainments drew them out, 
and they seemed to have confined their public appear- 
ances to attendance at an unfashionable chapel on 
Sundays. They had few friends, still fewer intimates, 
" my father and mother in their hearts caring for nobody 
in the world but me." 2 

Even in the travels over England and the Continent 
the chief and absorbing topics of interest were scenery, 
churches, castles, works of art, — the life and manners of 
the people being of quite subordinate and incidental im- 
port. Though John Ruskin, in his journeys over Britain 
1 Prseterita, i. 328. 2 Ibid., i. 240. 



22 JOHN RUSKIN. 

in the post-chaise, must have passed over the land dur- 
ing the period of in tensest misery and degradation we 
have ever known, when " the condition of the people " 
was beginning to force itself upon the governing classes 
by insurrectionary movements of impotent despair, there 
is nothing to indicate that the poverty and degradation 
of a people widely lapsing into hopeless pauperism, or 
congested in loathsome disease-swept areas of new 
manufacturing towns, claimed the attention or deeply 
stirred the feelings of our travellers. Engels, in his 
" English Working Classes in 1844," has given an ap- 
palling picture of the great " Cottonopolis." But young 
Ruskin's boyish record confines itself to telling us that 
" Manchester is a most disagreeable town." 2 

It was the England of romantic castles and cathedrals, 
of fair streams and majestic hills, that absorbed the boy- 
ish passion. Perhaps it was best that it should have 
been so, that the ugliness and misery of life should have 
been so carefully kept from spoiling the dreams of golden 
youth. Yet, as we read the eloquent denunciation and 
commiseration of Mr. Ruskin's later years, we sometimes 
feel that the note of close, detailed familiarity from per- 
sonal experience, which gives such actuality to his treat- 
ment of inanimate nature and art, is lacking ; though 
deep inherent truths are presented, there is a suspicion 

1 Later improvements only induced Kuskin to expand this 
judgment, for in " Fors " (iv. 201) we find him declaring that, 
" taken as a whole, Manchester can produce no good art and no 
good literature ; it is falling off even in the quality of its cotton ; 
it has reversed and vilified in loud lies every essential principle 
of political economy." It is only fair to say that this Khadaman- 
tine judgment was evoked by the proposal to annex the lake of 
Thirlmere for the supply of water to Manchester. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 23 

of unrealism which would not have been there if 
John Ruskin had grown up from infancy in frank, close, 
personal contact with the life of the masses, whose 
claims upon a life worth living he champions so power- 
fully. 

This tardy experience of the darker side of life Mr. 
Ruskin himself clearly recognises. Summing the expe- 
riences of his first twenty years he says, " I had never 
seen death, nor had any part in the grief or anxiety of 
a sick chamber ; nor had I ever seen, far less conceived, 
I the misery of unaided poverty." 1 

This is significant of much, for it points to a late 
I revelation of the meaning and entire character of 
life. 

§ 6. Many a lad, his schooldays ended, is plunged into 
the battle of life, to fight his way in business or profession 
or in the university, and to stand or fall largely by his 
own efforts. But his parents fenced round John 
Ruskin with almost the same protecting care in his 
Oxford career as in his home. His mother lived in 
lodgings at Oxford during all the terms he kept, and 
his father's figure became a familiar one in the High 
Street. The choice of a college was a momentous ques- 
tion. The best that care or money could procure had 
always been his. Christ Church must be his college : 
the life of a commoner, even in an essentially aristo- 
cratic college, is not good enough ; he must be gentle- 
man-commoner, wear a gold tassel, and consort with the 
scions of noble families. Though it is suggested that 
some doubt about his ability to pass a preliminary ex- 
amination contributed to this decision, Mr Ruskin him- 
1 Praeterita, i. 431. 



24 JOHN BUSKIN. 

self does not conceal the fact that the worthy wine- 
merchant with all his admirable qualities, was some- 
thing of a snob, and gives a humorous sketch of his ' 
parent's secretly cherished ambitions. 

" My father did not like the word ' commoner ' — all 
the less, because our relations in general were not 
uncommon. Also, though himself satisfying his pride 
enough in being the head of the sherry trade, he felt and 
saw in his son powers which had not then full scope in 
the sherry trade. His ideal of my future — now entirely ! 
formed in conviction of my genius — was that I should ' 
enter at college into the best society, take all the prizes : 
every year, and a double first to finish with ; marry 
Lady Clara Vere de Vere ; write poetry as good as 
Byron's, only pious ; preach sermons as good as Bos- 
suet's, only Protestant ; be made, at forty, Bishop of 
Winchester, and at fifty, Primate of England." 1 

John fortunately seems to have inherited nothing of 
this propensity, for though in " Fors " and elsewhere he 
sometimes playfully admits his liking for a lord, the ! 
irony is sufficiently patent to deceive nobody. Aristo- j 
crat in the true sense of the word as Mr. Ruskin always 
boasted himself to be, no one great Englishman of this j 
century had in his nature less of that quality which I 
Thackeray pronounced to be the essence of snobbishness, ! 
" a mean admiration of mean objects." 

It is frequently remarked, though generally without 
due regard to the size and accessibility of our univer- 
sities, how small a number of those whose minds have \ 
made a powerful mark upon the intellectual history of 
the century have been educated at Oxford or Cam- 
1 Prseterita, i. 141. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 25 

bridge. A fairer stricture upon university methods has 
reference to the defective capacity which our univer- 
sities have shown for the detection, stimulation, and 
direction of any special talent or genius in those who 
have entered the academic gates. Mr. Ruskin was a 
true lover of Oxford, and he got and gave much profit 
and delight from the. years he spent there ; but his love 
for Oxford regarded it as a storehouse of great historical 
associations, a seat of learning, a " home of lost causes " 
rather than a curriculum of studies for modern young 
English gentlemen. Ruskin and Matthew Arnold in 
Oxford, like Tennyson and Darwin at the sister univer- 
sity, drew their best intellectual sustenance beyond the 
limits of the prescribed routine, and neither sought nor 
won great academic distinctions in the orthodox studies 
of the university. The detection of grammatical sub- 
tleties, which was then called " scholarship,' ' and the 
dissection of historical and philosophic corpses, with no 
serious endeavour to rekindle the spirit of the past or to 
shed serviceable light upon the present, gave little satis- 
faction to the strenuous demands of such a mind as Mr. 
Ruskin's. Something he learned from the great ancient 
books, especially from Plato, whose quenchless glory has 
always shown through the crassest and most filmy methods 
in interpretation, and from the first great living histo- 
rians, Herodotus and Thucydides ; but all true guidance 
and assistance of a university in the organic development 
of an individual mind was entirely wanting. Looking 
back from later years he sums up this period as follows : 
" Oxford taught me as much Greek and Latin as she 
could. For the rest, the whole time I was there my 
mind was simply in the state of a squash before 'tis 



26 JOHN BUSKIN. 

a peacod — and remained so there a year or two 
afterwards." l 

Allowing for a certain strain of exaggeration in all 
Mr. Ruskin's more familiar writings, it is right to con- 
clude that he took little from that training for which the 
university authorities made themselves responsible. But 
he seems to have been fairly industrious and acquisitive 
in other studies than the classics, though a breakdown 
in health precluded him from seeking " honours " in the 
schools. The only formal academic distinction which 
fell to him was the Newdigate prize for an English 
poem. But the indirect and extra-academic services 
of his residence in Oxford were many and invaluable. 
The social education of mixing with many men and many 
minds, the formation of some close personal attachments, 
the free intellectual atmosphere of the place, were par- 
ticularly profitable to a home-keeping youth. The begin- 
ning of a life-long friendship with Mr. Henry Acland, 
who was one of the pioneers in the introduction of the 
modern branches of physical science into the university, 
brought him into touch with one of the powerful intellec- 
tual movements of the age, and helped to widen his out- 
look upon life. With the more absorbing religious 
interests, which at that time were gathering force, 
and which soon became so dominant a power as to 
arrogate to themselves the title " Oxford Movement," 
John Ruskin had no sympathy. Grounded in Scotch 
evangelicism, he does not yet appear to have experienced 
the earlier stirrings of that religious feeling which took 
distinct form a few years later in his curious and inter- 
esting tract, " Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds," 
iPrseterita, ii. 34. 



FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF EARLY LIFE. 27 

and which was to manifest itself thoughout his life in a 
series of concentric circles of ever widening religious 
sentiment. Nor did the interests of his Oxford group 
of friends draw him into the consideration of grave 
political and social issues. Though among his Christ 
Church comrades there were individual minds of dis- 
tinguished calibre, there was no such brilliant gathering 
of ardent spirits as Tennyson had found ten years before 
at Cambridge, who — 

"held debate, a band 
Of youthful friends, on mind and art 
And labour and the changing mart, 
And all the framework of the land." 

On many subjects young Ruskin seemed to have 
reached a startling maturity of conviction ; his earliest 
writings show an unusually wide acquaintance not 
merely with the technical treatises of the art subjects 
with which he chiefly deals, but with ancient and modern 
history and literature, and even with the great writers 
upon morals and theology. But in all this early 
thought and study, no signs appear of any specific appli- 
cation of his opening views of art and life in the direc- 
tion of social reform. During his undergraduate time, 
and for some years afterwards, no clear convictions 
regarding economic wrongs, or the miseries arising 
from them, appear to have forced themselves upon 
his understanding, or to have stirred the passion of 
revolt within him. For the most part he remained 
absorbed in art, literature, and travel. At first sight 
this may seem unnatural. It is not really so. The 
larger superficial features of the economic and political 



28 JOHN 11USKIN. 

life of a nation acquire a constant and customary import 
to us at such an early age, that, unless the course of our 
education is particularly directed to them, or some 
sensational illustrations break our emotional apathy, 
all personal appreciation of their significance may 
be deferred indefinitely. There was nothing in John 
Ruskin's early life and training to focus his curiosity 
on social phenomena, or to stir his emotions to social 
sympathy ; every circumstance of his upbringing, both 
the negative condition of an almost total lack of social 
experience, and the positive condition of an early and 
deep absorption in interests far removed from social 
reform, tended to screen from him the " mission " which 
he was destined to fulfil, and for which he was making 
sure but unconscious preparation. 



! 



CHAPTER II. 

FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 

§ 1. The different impulses to social reform. §2. Tardy develop- 
ment of social interests and views. § 3. The false imputation 
of loose thinking. §4. Love of Nature the starting-point — 
Early excursions in architecture. § 5. The art-teaching of 
"Modern Painters' 1 — Realism and Idealism. §6. Moral pur- 
pose the criterion of art. §7. Moral ideas as effluences of 
Divinity. §8. First glimpses of his social outlook. §9. No 
definite recognition of "Society 11 in "Modern Painters. 11 
§ 10. The relation of architecture to national life and charac- 
ter. § 11. First study of the rise and fall of nations — " Stones 
of Venice. 11 § 12. The bridge between art reform and social 
reform. § 13. Beginnings of social revolt. § 14. The political 
economy of art. § 15. " Unto this Last " — Mr. Ruskin enters 
the social crusade. §16. " Munera Pulveris " — Formal aban- 
donment of art mission. § 17. Practical applications of social 
doctrine — " Time and Tide. 11 § 18. The design and character 
of "Fors Clavigera 11 — Culmination of Mr. Ruskin's social 
teaching. 

§ 1. If we use the term social reform, in its broad 
sense, to describe those larger changes in the structure 
or working of society which aim directly at some general 
improvement of human life, as distinguished from such 
work of reform as attacks narrower and more specific 
defects, we shall find that social reformers come to this 
work by widely different paths. Often it is the personal 
experience of some concrete evil that first awakens a 
sense of social wrong, and a desire for redress ; reform 



30 JOHN BUSKIN. 

energy once generated is fed by a natural flow from vari- 
ous neighbouring channels of activity, the stream broad- 
ening as it goes, until the man whose early activity was 
stimulated by the desire to break down some little barrier 
which dams the stream in his back garden, finds himself 
breasting the tide of some oceanic movement. So it was 
with such men as Cobden, Lord Shaftesbury, and Cob- 
bett ; a necessary organic association of related interests 
and sympathies drew them from some specific " cause " 
into the wider paths of philanthropic statesmanship. 
Other instances there are of men who, entering public 
life as a profession or a pastime, have come to discern 
underneath the chicanery of party moves, and those 
brief expediencies of legislation and administration 
which have usurped the honourable title of politics, 
the deeper needs of a continuous organic social policy, 
and have set themselves earnestly to the larger task. 
Men such as C. J. Fox and Gladstone may be placed in 
this order. Others again are social reformers d priori, 
entering through some gateway of large philosophic prin- 
ciples into the practical service of society. The Utili- 
tarian School of Bentham and Mill, and modern Socialism 
furnish not a few instances of men thus deductively im- 
pelled to social reform. Literature, art, and theology 
have each contributed leading impulses to social revolt, 
accompanied by more or less definite suggestions of 
social transformation. Byron, Wordsworth and Shelley, 
Hugo, Whitman, Tolstoy, Ibsen, illustrate the flow of 
free literary forces in the same direction. Pre-Raphael- 
itism, Wagnerism, and the subsidiary art currents of 
naturalism and impressionism, have their wide social 
implications, and have contributed many of the most 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 31 

powerful prophets of revolution or reform. Wagner him- 
self, Burne-Jones, and Morris in England, are leading 
members of a great body of men in strenuous and radical 
revolt against some of the most distinctive features of 
recent civilisation. 

For the influence of theology I now only allude to the 
Christian Socialism of the broad church clergy of this 
country in the middle of this century, and to the strong 
and spreading spirit of reform which prevails in a large 
section of the High Church in England, and in the 
Catholic Church of Austria, Germany, France, and Bel- 
gium at the present time, to say nothing of that most 
intense passion of revolt which animates the Russian 
sects who hazard their lives to embody in their social con- 
duct the spirit of primitive Christianity as they inter- 
pret it. 

§ 2. Now, politics, as we have seen, had no particular 
interest for Mr. Ruskin. He always spoke of himself 
as an " old Tory," and the making of democratic ma- 
chinery was always repellant to his instincts of political 
order. The radical philosophy of Bentham, Austin, and 
the Utilitarians formed the object of his sternest denun- 
ciation from the earliest time when his attention was 
called to it. Indeed, it must be said that his mind 
had no natural affinity for political thought, and he 
early developed a rough intuitive philosophy of his 
own, grounded in natural piety, which disinclined him 
from the endeavour to explain either individual or 
national conduct by laws owing their discovery to 
rationalist analysis. It might indeed have seemed 
natural that the contemporary literature of his early 
life should have sown seeds of social revolt in so sen- 



32 JOHN RUSKIN. 

sitive a nature. But no clear signs of such an influence 
are discernible. Byron was indeed an early favourite, 
but it was his penetration into the facts of nature, and 
not the sentiments of " Byronism," which impressed him. 
Byron's true gifts he held in high, perhaps unduly high, 
esteem, writing of him thus : " Of all things within range 
of human thought he felt the facts, and discerned the 
natures with accurate justice." 1 This love of fact, and 
the felicity of song which gave it voice, he received from 
Byron; the effervescent cynicism, together with the 
nobler sentiments of a great spirit in protest against 
the conventions and inhumanity of society, he failed to 
assimilate. 

Shelley never got that mastery over him which he held 
over so robust a genius as Browning ; he seems to have 
always been to Mr. Ruskin what he was to Arnold, " a 
beautiful but ineffectual angel beating in the void his 
luminous wings, in vain." The full human worth of 
Wordsworth was to bear fruit later in his life, though 
from the first the nature-worship of this poet was a 
constant fount of joy. 

The brief sketch given in the last chapter of the outer 
circumstances of Mr. Ruskin's early life, and of the order 
of growth in his interests, will explain what has seemed 
to some the strange absence of all visible signs of sym- 
pathy with social movements of any kind in his early life. 

It was not a case of retarded emotional or intellectual 
development. On the contrary, a perusal of the early 
tracts on Architecture, or vol. i. of the " Modern Paint- 
ers," shows a quite astonishing maturity of refined 
emotional analysis. How comes it that one who had 
1 Prseterita, i. 269. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 33 

seen so much, had thought and felt so deeply and so 

widely upon so many matters, should have no inkling of 

that work which in middle life he came to recognise as 

i his supreme mission ? The answer to such questions is 

perfectly conclusive and satisfactory. Though incautious 

i and sometimes extravagant in words, John Ruskin was 

i a plodding and careful thinker ; his thoughts had never 

| been directed, by necessary contact with his early inter- 

| ests, to the social and economic structure of societies, and 

| therefore he had never formed any definite convictions 

relating to them. 

Never being thrown into the eddying tide of any of 
the radical movements in politics or philosophy which 
marked that restless age, he was not impelled by con- 
tact with other fervent souls into hasty speculations or 
cheaply acquired convictions upon the fundamental prob- 
lems of society. Yet it is none the less true that 
throughout his studies of nature, art, and history, he 
had been sowing the seeds which, deeply buried for 
; many years, were destined by necessary process of 
thought and feeling to grow and ripen into the ideals 
of his social teaching. 

§ 3. No great writer has shown a more contemptuous 
disregard for those literary arts of concealment com- 
monly used to secure an appearance of consistency, no 
one has so freely and so loudly proclaimed his repudia- 
tion of past pronouncements upon important topics ; in 
no case has this serviceable frankness been treated with 
such lack of courtesy and understanding. Because Mr. 
Ruskin has always striven to confer upon the public 
that greatest service which a thinker can confer, by 
making everything he writes " part of a great confes- 



34 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sion ; " because he has set down all his thoughts and 
feelings in their natural order, without exaggeration or 
extenuation of their form and intensity, many of his 
critics have chosen to represent him as a loose and reck- 
less thinker, borne along by sudden gusts of sentiment, 
and void of any stable unity of thought or clear order 
of development. Now the utter groundlessness of such 
criticism is demonstrable by any one who takes the 
trouble to read his representative books in the order 
of their publication. 

§ 4. Such a study will disclose, even in his earliest 
writings, certain prime and fundamental laws of thought 
and feeling which enable us to see all his later work in 
its true light as a multifarious and harmonious applica- 
tion of these same principles. This true, deep consist- 
ency is not impaired by change of view leading to new 
lights upon important subjects, or by the inherent diffi- 
culties of getting lucid arrangement in the expression 
of ideas. This latter difficulty Mr. Ruskin always felt 
to be responsible for much misunderstanding. " It is 
strange that I hardly ever get anything stated with- 
out some grave mistake, however true in my main 
discourse." 1 

The intelligent and minute love of Nature which 
showed itself so early in Mr. Ruskin's life must be j 
taken as the starting-point in the just appreciation of 
his work. In time and in intensity it took precedence 
of his interest in art. " The beginning of all my own 
right art-work in life depended, not on my love of art, 
but of mountains and sea." 2 His childish pursuits, the 
collection of stones, — which began his geological and 

1 Letter quoted, Collingwood, ii. 138. 2 Eagle's Nest, p. 45. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 35 

metallurgical studies, — the minute devotion to wild 
flowers, the study of river-beds, cloud-forms, the shape 
of hills, were not merely his early passion, but his chief 
intellectual training. At the same time, in his literary 
education it was the same detailed attention to the forces 
and forms of words, the units in the natural history . 
of literature, which was laying the foundation for the 
" absolute accuracy of diction and precision of accent 
in prose," 1 which he attributes to his mother's teaching, 
and which are the chief sources of his literary power. 
In later life, as we have seen, the intellectual capacity 
to which he laid especial claim was analysis, and this 
capacity was grounded in the " patience in looking and 
precision in feeling " which marked the youthful lover 
of Nature. It was no mere accident, but a just instinct 
which led young Ruskin to attach to his earliest publica- 
tion of importance the nom de plume Kara <j>vcnv (accord- 
ing to Nature). 

It was inevitable that a close student of Nature, 
gifted with power of analysis, who turned his attention 
to any of the orthodoxies of English art half a century 
ago, should take up an attitude of radical reform. By 
natural disposition an upholder of established order, and 
a man of peace, Mr. Ruskin was yet driven by the con- 
ditions of his age and country into as many " heresies" 
as he had interests. Though not till later did he dis- 
cover the deeper nature of the malady which made this 
inevitable, he could not fail to find the evil symptoms in 
each separate art of human life. 

The "violent instinct for architecture" 2 which first 
drove him, while still an Oxford undergraduate, into 
1 Praeterita, i. 208. 2 Ibid., i. 206. 



36 JOHN RUSKIN. 

the field of battle, 1 is significant alike for its title, and 
the scathing criticism it contains of the thraldom of 
architecture to narrowly conceived principles of utility. 
This early treatment of " The Poetry of Architecture ; 
or the Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered 
in its Association with National Scenery and National 
Character," is chiefly noteworthy as containing the first 
germs of that splendid exposition of the true human 
uses of architecture in " The Seven Lamps," and as 
indicating his early sense of the principle that honest 
adaptation of material to the true needs of life is the 
basis of Tightness and of beauty in buildings. The 
first germ of his special thought, that " realism," or 
study of the facts of life, and "idealism," or the use 
of the imagination to impose forms of beauty which 
shall appeal to taste, are not contradictory but com- 
plementary processes, is traceable in embryo, even in 
this boyish work. The full relation, however, between 
architecture and national character which " The Seven 
Lamps" was to disclose and illustrate is yet hardly 
traceable. 

§ 5. To the first of Mr. Ruskin's two great masters, 
J. W. Turner and Thomas Carlyle, allusion has already 
been made. Making all due allowance for the enthu- 
siasm of hero-worship, it may fairly be said that these 
two men were chief instruments in determining Mr. 
Ruskin's career. Turner made him an art prophet, 
Carlyle, a social reformer. Mr. Collingwood, in his 

1 Earlier boyish essays, published in the " Magazine of Natural 
History " (March, 1834), and elsewhere, as well as an unpublished 
early draft of the leading ideas of "Modern Painters" contained 
in a reply to a criticism on Turner in Blackwood's Magazine, show 
the same early spirit of defiant scrutiny of established opinions. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 37 

admirable work, " The Life and Work of John Ruskin," 
traces the focusing of these rays of art-truth in a swift 
process of conviction, almost of conversion, in the year 
1842, when his eyes were opened to the true mission 
of higher art as the interpreter of Nature in her deeper 
attributes and motives by the capacity of human sin- 
cerity. It was the perception of the distinctive qualities 
of Turner's landscapes which drove this conviction home, 
and Mr. Colling wood tells us how young Ruskin re- 
nounced henceforth his poetic aspirations, his capacities 
of art production, and his hopes to be a man of science, 
taking on him the mission " to tell the world that Art, 
no less than the other spheres of life, had its heroes ; 
that the mainspring of their energy was Sincerity, and 
the burden of their utterance, Truth." 1 

This carries us to the first great art crusade. 2 John 
Ruskin was only twenty-three years old when he wrote 
the first volume of his " Modern Painters ; their Superi- 
ority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient 
Masters proved by Examples of the True, the Beautiful, 
and the Intellectual, from the Works of Modern Artists, 
especially from those of J. M. W. Turner, Esq., R.A." 

With the effect of this bombshell upon the world 
of painting we are not here concerned; nor need we 
discuss the extraordinary brilliancy of literary style, and 
the display of art learning it contains. What does con- 

1 Life and Work, vol. i,,p. 103. 

2 Though " Modern Painters " is rightly taken as the first full 
teaching of Mr. Ruskin's art>criticism, the character of that teach- 
ing amply justifies the claim which the author, in reviewing 
his life's work from the wider human standpoint, assigns it. 
'"Modern Painters' taught the claim of all lower nature on 
the hearts of man." (Fors, Let. lxxviii.) 



38 JOHN RUSKIN. 

cern us is the clear exposition of root principles in art- 
criticism, which were afterwards to inspire his social 
teaching. In this first volume of " Modern Painters," 
published in 1843, we find stated, in language of uncom- 
promising vigour, the three main canons which Mr. 
Ruskin later carried from art in its narrower conno- 
tation to the art of life. All art must be based upon 
patient, thorough, detailed knowledge of the facts of its 
subject-matter in Nature. This is the groundwork of 
"realism," the lack of which forms one of the two 
chief heads of his indictment against most of the great 
" masters " of the post-Raphaelite schools in Italy and in 
England. In enforcing this canon against reputations 
so great as Claude and Poussin, Mr. Ruskin exposes 
the deadly sin of conventionalism. The object of art 
is not to imitate, nor to deceive the senses, but to tell 
the truth. But is art to tell all truths, to give a literal 
transcript of all individual phenomena of the outer 
world? No; such realism is not art. On the con- 
trary, art is concerned with the rendering of ideals. 
Nature is the servant of this idealism by furnishing 
ideas of truth and beauty. " Ideas of truth are the 
foundation, and ideas of imitation the destruction of 
all art." 2 These " ideas of truth " are the essential 
characters of any object where all that is accidental 
or merely individual is brushed off from the type. We 
need not pause to consider how far Locke or how far 
Plato was responsible for this doctrine of ideas, but it 
is important to discover that these ideas, which are 
strictly Utopian (for, like Plato's, " they have no exist- 
ence upon the earth, but are found, if anywhere, in 
1 Modern Painters, vol. i., p. 29. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM 89 

heaven"), supply the true subject-matter of artistic 
workmanship. To bring out these " specific " forms 
in landscape is the first aim of art. The preface to 
the second edition of this volume contains the more 
mature statement of this essential doctrine, and presses 
home the second head of the indictment against the 
post-Raphaelite school on the one hand, and the Dutch 
school on the other. Whereas the former generalised 
so widely as to destroy all specific truth, producing 
trees that belong to no recognisable species, rocks 
which have no geological existence, the latter overload 
their pictures with the cumber of individual trivial 
detail. Now, Mr. Ruskin insists that " there is an 
ideal form of every herb, flower, and tree; it is that 
form to which every individual of the species has a ten- 
dency to arrive, freed from the influence of accident 
or disease." 2 Again, " Every herb and flower of the 
field has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty ; it 
has its peculiar habitation, expression, and function. 
The highest art is that which seizes this specific char- 
acter, which develops and illustrates it, which assigns 
to it its proper position in the landscape, and which, by 
means of it, enhances and enforces the great impression 
which the picture is intended to convey." 2 The fuller 
teaching of this idealism of art is found in the second 
volume of " Modern Painters," published some years 
later, where the functions of the imagination in art 
receive maturer treatment ; but its essential features 
are found in the earliest of Mr. Ruskin's great books. 
§ 6. Still more important is the introduction from the 
very outset of the moral sense as the criterion of art", at 
1 Modern Painters, Preface, xxvi. 2 Ibid., xxx. 



40 JOHN BUSKIN. 

once the standard of valuation for ideas and the foun- 
tain of pure taste. " The picture which has the nobler 
and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, 
is a greater and a better picture than that which has 
the less noble and less numerous ideas, however beauti- 
fully expressed," 1 was a bold sentence for a young art 
critic to write. Again, " Perfect taste is the faculty of 
receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those ma- 
terial sources which are attractive to our moral nature 
in its purity and perfection," 2 while " Ideas of beauty 
are the subjects of moral, but not of intellectual per- 
ception." 3 

The fuller exposition of the second volume, in which 
the essentially moral and religious basis of the " specific 
ideas " in nature on the one hand, and the capacities of 
the imagination of the artist on the other hand, is 
disclosed, is but the maturer growth of these same 
conceptions. 

In a word, Mr. Ruskin as art prophet shows from the 
beginning an organic harmony of the powers of Realist, 
Idealist, and Moralist, the imagination working upon an 
intellectual and emotional basis of close knowledge of 
reality, under the supreme control of the spiritual faculty. 

Having once reached the position that art is the 
representation of true and worthy ideas seen in nature 
by the penetrative and constructive power of the imagi- 
nation, Mr. Ruskin never swerved from it. Steadily he 
proceeds, his feet upon the earth, his head amid the 
clouds of heaven, peering through for glimpses of a 
beatific vision. 

1 Modern Painters, vol. i., p. 12. 2 Ibid., vol. i., p. 32. 
3 Ibid., vol. i., p. 34 ; c/., vol. ii., p. 15. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 41 

Thus humanity is at once the standard and the end 
of art. The later volumes of " Modern Painters " con- 
tinually enforce this truth. Mere realism, the presen- 
tation of natural truths, however accurately, is not 
worthy art. "All art which involves no reference to 
man is inferior or nugatory. And all art which in- 
volves misconception of man, or base thought of him, 
is in that degree false and base." 1 So art must justify 
itself by human service. "The difference between 
great and mean art lies wholly in the nobleness of the 
end to which the effort of the painter is addressed. . . . 
So that true criticism of art never can consist in the 
mere application of rules ; it can be just only when it is 
founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable in- 
stincts and changeful efforts of human nature, chastened 
and guarded by unchanging love of all things that 
God has created to be beautiful, and pronounced to be 
good." 2 

This reference of art to the demands of human life 
has an intimate bearing upon Mr. Ruskin's valuation of 
the two great sources of art-work. Greece, with its 
sincerity, its sense of the sufficiency of nature and of 
human life, its love of harmony and order in the bear- 
ing of the individual, and in the establishment of civic 
life, produced the most absolutely perfect forms of art- 
work within the classic limits, the most faithful presen- 
tation of fact and of idea. But here was found no 
adequate provision for the spiritual education of man. 
" The Greek frankly took what the gods provided, and 
enjoyed it. His heaven was here. The other world, if 
there were any, was a thing to be staved off as long as 
1 Modern Painters, v. 203. 2 Ibid., iii. 23. 



42 JOHN BUSKIN. 

possible. At best, death was a sad necessity, but there 
was no thought of any preparation for it which could 
interfere with his duty in the present. True, the 
shadow of Fate haunted him; but Fate was not an 
external law, but a part and parcel of his own life. For 
the most part his gods were glorified men, who, as men, [ 
were either indifferent or appeasable." 1 

This open-eyed but restricted outlook upon life did I 
not satisfy Mr. Ruskin, who had no sympathy at any 
time with the "frankly pagan" attitude of modern "aes- 
thetes." Gothic art, painting, and architecture, under 
the inspiration of Christian influences, supplied what 
Greece lacked, — the deeper seriousness, the sense of 
mystery and spiritual strife. Beauty as " the expres- 
sion of the creating Spirit of the Universe" is inade- 
quately, because too finitely, rendered in Greek art. 
The master-works of Gothic art, seldom if ever attain- 
ing the flawless execution of the greatest work of 
Greece, were rich in witnesses to divinity in man and 
in appeals to humanity through nature, containing a 
deeper, more stimulating view of life, and hallowing 
by spiritual associations the common material facts. 
" Gothic architecture was, at all times, the architecture 
both of the church and of the tavern: the house of 
God and the house of man showing thus their integral 
connection." 

Thus the root of Mr. Ruskin's theory of art is its 
service to humanity through the presentation of noble 
ideas. Technique is taken for granted as the instru- 
ment of art, and not its essence. 

1 "A Disciple of Plato," by William Smart (p. 25), a most 
luminous study of the deeper teaching of Kuskin. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 43 

" In these books of mine their distinctive character as 

essays on art is their bringing everything to a root in 

human passion or human hope. Every principle of 

j painting which I have stated is traced to some vital 

; or spiritual fact ; and in my works on architecture, the 

preference accorded finally to one school over another 

is founded on a comparison of their influence on the 

| life of the workman, — a question by all other writers 

| on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or 

j despised." 1 

In this stress upon the primary significance of work 
| in its reaction on the life of the workmen, we trace in 
" Modern Painters " a chief driving force of the later 
social teaching. 

§ 7. In speaking of Mr. Ruskin's moral standard of 
ideas, it is essential to recognise that his foundation is 
not ethics but theology ; moral sentiments are not ulti- 
mate and self-existent things, but are effluences of 
divinity. The religious tone of his art-treatment in 
" Modern Painters " is not due to a general orthodox 
recognition of the divine supremacy in the order of the 
world, still less is it to be regarded as a literary expres- 
sion of youthful piety. It is the first deliberate and 
philosophic statement of that doctrine of theocratic gov- 
ernment of nature and of human life, which remained a 
fixed principle in all his work, and which we shall per- 
ceive as dominating his conception of a sound social 
order. There is, indeed, a stern enthusiasm in his early 
statement of this creed, which bears the marks of his 
Calvinist ancestry, and sometimes reminds us of that 
famous Scottish document, the " Shorter Catechism." 
1 Modern Painters, v. 201. 



44 JOUN BUSKIN. 

" Man's use and function (and let who will not grant, 
me this folio w me no further, for this I purpose always! 
to assume) is to be the witness of the glory of God,! 
and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience, 
and resultant happiness." 1 

A period of spiritual struggle marked his sojourn on< 
the Continent in 1845, and he tells us in an interesting! 1 
passage of "Prseterita" how, during this summer, spent' 1 
largely in the small Alpine village of Macugnana, he 1 
" began the course of study which led me into fruitful i 1 
thought, out of the till then passive sensations of merely I 
artistic or naturalist's life." 2 

The theology of the second volume of " Modern 
Painters" (published 1846) is one among many indi- 
cations of a ripening moral and religious fervour at this ;; 
period of his life. The theology of Barrow and Hooker, t 
the glowing piety of George Herbert, laid hold of his|' 
mind and spirit, as he wandered over Switzerland in! 
1844; and a period of intense devotion in 1845 to the 
Italian masters of painting and architecture in thej 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries fastened upon him an! 
abiding sense of the truth that moral character is the 1 
root of art. As art exists for man, and its greatness ', 
consists in what it can do for man, the power of all} 
great works of art must come from some source of J 1 
greatness in the artist. The voice of Mr. Euskin is 
here the voice of Carlyle ; art is an inspiration, " not a 
teachable or gainable thing, but the expression of the ' 
mind of a God-made great man : that, teach or preach, ] 
or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set' 
between one man's capacity and another's, and that this 
1 Modern Painters, vol. ii. 2 Prseterita, ii. 245. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 45 

I God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just 

j as rare in the world at one time as another." 1 

§ 8. When we turn to Mr. Ruskin's conception of 

I a true social system we shall perceive how this hero- 

! worship of art is applied in the wider art of social life. 

j The rarity of the great artist, and the infinite worth of 
his work (" For the difference between that ' all but 

| finest ' and < finest ' is an infinite one "), 2 is the necessary 
foundation of Mr. Ruskin's aristocracy in the order of 
social life. A letter written in 1845 shows how this 

j spiritual ferment was swiftly bearing him along towards 

j a wider mission than the vindication of Turner and the 
modern landscape school. " With your hopes for the 

' elevation of English art by means of fresco I cannot 
sympathise. ... It is not the material nor the space 
that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on 
our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small 

I pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones. . . . 
It is not the love of fresco that we want ; it is the love 
of God and His creatures ; it is humility, and charity, 
and self-denial and fasting; it is a total change of 
character. You want neither walls, nor plaster, nor 
colours — ga ne fait rien d V affaire ; it is Giotto and 
Ghirlandajo and Angelico that you want, and that you 
will and must want until this disgusting nineteenth 
century has — I can't say breathed, but steamed its 
last." 3 Here we have an early glimpse of the wider 
social outlook. 

Indeed, we may regard the definite moral and 
religious fusion of this period in some sense as a bridge 

1 Modern Painters, iii. 147-8. 2 Queen of the Air, § 141. 

3 Collingwood, " Life and Work," i. 126. 



VJ* 



46 JOHN BUSKIN. 

from aesthetics into social criticism. To a young man 
of broad sympathy and analytic temper much pondering 
upon the deeper issues of religion inevitably proved 
solvent of early orthodoxy. Mr. Ruskin himself thought 
it sufficiently important to record how in 1845 he first 
" broke the Sabbath " by climbing a hill after church. 
In fact, churches " built with hands " were beginning to 
lose something of their old significance, and he was 
working his way towards that broader conception of a 
Church based upon a deeper harmony of spiritual con- ' 
victions, the federation of all Protestants, which he ' 
proposed in his pamphlet of 1851, entitled "Notes on 
the Construction of Sheepfolds." Though his position 
of broad Protestantism was but a half-way house which 
he later on regarded with contempt, 1 it serves to 
indicate a growing liberation of thought upon high 
matters. Heretic in painting, architecture, geology, 
Mr. Ruskin now came to be regarded by his parents ' 
and his orthodox friends as a religious heretic. 

§ 9. But in all these early writings upon the philos- I 
ophy and practice of art and its vital relation to morality 
and religion, widely discursive as they are, we find no 
definite conception of the pressure of social problems. 
The second volume of " Modern Painters," with its 
astonishing width of scope, finds no place for society j 
considered as an object for the exercise of art and the ! 
imaginative faculty. In that book we find indeed an 
eloquent recognition of humanity. Its chapter " Of Vital 

1 See, for instance, his first " Letter on the Italian Question," 
written July, 1859 (and reprinted in " Arrows of the Chace," vol. 
ii., p. 3), for an already clear recognition of the narrow arrogance 
of Protestantism. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 47 

Beauty in Man" is perhaps the first clear evidence in 
Mr. Ruskin of a deep-rooted dissatisfaction with man's 
condition as a physical and moral being. The " right 
ideal " of human nature is an object of passionate con- 
viction, and can only be obtained for art " by the banish- 
ment of the immediate signs of sin upon the countenance 
and body." The power whereby the imagination of the 
artist can compass his task is Love. " Nothing but 
love can read the letters, nothing but sympathy catch 
the sound." But Mr. Ruskin is thinking of the indi- 
vidual alone. When he tells us, " There is a perfect 
ideal to be wrought out of every face around us," he 
declines to apply his idealism to collective man. In 
" Modern Painters," then, we have ideals of inorganic 
nature, of vegetable and animal life in their several 
species, of man the single human being, but not of 
humanity. 

"^An occasional glimpse, indeed, is to be found of 
truths regarding the essential relation of work to man. 
The pamphlet on " Pre-Raphaelitism," written in 1851, 
opens with this striking sentence : " It may be proved 
with much certainty that God intends no man to live 
in this world without working, but it seems to me no less 
evident that He intends every man to be happy in his 
work." But though this sentence contains implicitly all 
that is expressed in his later more vigorous pronounce- 
ment, " Life without work is robbery : work without art 
is brutality," he is yet far removed from the state of 
social indignation which gives its sting to this forceful 
epigram.j 

The wider implications of the " gospel of work " were 
yet hidden from him : the art interest in the main still 



48 JOHN RU8KIXT. 

absorbed his thought. And yet it was through his dis- 
tinctively artistic studies that Mr. Ruskin came to know 
the supreme need of social reform. 

§10. Entering his maturer study of the history of 
architecture and painting with the conviction that " the 
sensation of beauty is not sensual on the one hand, nor 
is it intellectual on the other, but is dependent on a pure, 
right, and open state of the heart both for its truth and 
for its intensity, " * Mr. Ruskin was driven to certain 
conclusions regarding the influence of political and 
industrial institutions and habits upon the character of 
art. Nowhere is the nature and vital capacity of a peo- 
ple expressed so permanently in such diverse forms, in 
such impressive fashion, so unconsciously, and therefore 
so truthfully, as in its architecture. In regarding the 
churches, palaces, and houses as great documents of 
national character, Mr. Ruskin could not fail to get 
new and powerful lights upon the meaning of history. 

Applying his moral principles of art to the history of 
this specific art, he was led to deep reflections upon the 
moral causes which underlay the destiny of nations and 
were responsible for their rise and fall. The work em- 
bodying these reflections, " The Seven Lamps of Archi- 
tecture," was written in 1848, and though Mr. Ruskin, 
newly married, with a quiet home of his own, suffered 
none of the rude shocks of this tempestuous year to 
break his outward tranquillity, the writings of Carlyle 
had already begun to stir the dark depths of his soul, 
and he writes with gloomy vaticination, " The aspect of 
the years that approach us is as solemn as it is full of 
mystery ; and the weight of the evil against which we 
1 Modern Painters, vol. ii., p. 15. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 49 

have to contend is increasing like letting out of water. 
It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics or the enter- 
tainment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth are 
waging louder, and its miseries heavier every day." 1 

§ 11. " Stones of Venice " — the work he undertook 
in 1849 — marks a perceptible advance in his social 
teaching. Here he definitely set himself to a concrete 
illustration of his theory of the dependence of national 
art upon national character. 

" The ' Stones of Venice ' had, from beginning to end, 
no other aim than to show that this Gothic architecture 
of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its 
features, a state of pure national faith and of domestic 
virtue ; and that its Renaissance architecture had arisen 
out of, and in all its features indicated, a state of con- 
cealed national infidelity and of domestic corruption." 2 

A fairly isolated instance of national development in 
art, commerce, and political power, Venice could hardly 
fail to throw a direct and powerful flood of light upon 
the " condition of England," a country which, actuated 
by the same evil pride of Mammon-worship that ruined 
the bride of the Adriatic, was visibly plunging into the 
same slough of enervating and degrading materialism. 
Mr. Ruskin clearly recognises the important educative 
influence of this study upon himself. In a passage of 
" Praeterita " he describes how Tintoret led him to study 
the fate of the Venetian republic, " So forcing me into 
a study of the history of Venice herself ; and through 
that into what else I have traced or told of the laws of 
national strength and virtue." 3 

1 Collingwood, "Life and Work," i. 137-8. 

2 Crown of Wild Olive, § 05. 3 Praeterita, ii. 250. 



50 JOHN BUSKIN. 

§12. There are passages in the earlier books and , 
lectures where Mr. Ruskin seems to insist upon the 
moral character of the individual artist as an essential h 
condition of true art-work. But his maturer thought 
leads him to lay more stress upon social than individual 
morality, as he came to realise the power of heredity, ; 
tradition, and the direct social support accorded to the 
individual by the spirit and institutions of his age. His 
true doctrine is thus summarised : " Let a nation be 
healthy, happy, pure in its enjoyments, brave in its acts, li 
and broad in its affections, and its art will spring around 
and within it as freely as the foam from a fountain ; but 
let the springs of its life be impure, and its course pol- 
luted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises 
on the mathematical structure of bubbles." 1 

This clear and growing recognition of the organic re 
lation between art and national character was the bridge x 
from Mr. Ruskin' s art mission to his social mission. 

How can the springs of English national life to-day i 
be purified so that a true national art may once more be | 
possible ? What are the taints of conduct and character, 
what are the vices and defects of social order which 
must be removed before a true national life blossoming 
in art is attainable ? Such questions beset Mr. Ruskin 
now. Read the chapter upon " The Nature of Gothic " 
in the " Seven Lamps," and the whole process of his 
social teaching appears in embryo. Read " Stones of 
Venice," and his whole policy of social reform becomes 
inevitable. 

§ 13. The earliest expressions of social revolt con- 
sisted in sharp outbursts against the vulgar utilitarianism, 

1 On the Old Road, vol. i., § 276 ; cf. Lectures on Art, p. 26. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 51 

the " corrupt, over-paupered civilisation," 1 the mechani- 
cal conception of progress which marked the age. The 
denunciations of Carlyle swept Mr. Ruskin's heart with 
a passionate storm of sympathy, and from their first 
close acquaintance, in 1850, he may be accounted a 
disciple. In 1851 he found himself unable to share in 
the chorus of self-congratulation which the English 
nation were raising over the apotheosis of manufacture 
at the great exhibition, and the editor of a keen-scented 
trade journal already detected signs that Mr. Ruskin 
was " inimical to sundry vested interests." 

Some years elapsed before his social views took the 
form of definite criticism. 

In 1855 we find the first mention of serious attention 
to political economy. Writing in that year he says, 
with cheerful self-confidence, " My studies in political 
economy have induced me to believe that nobody knows 
anything about that ; and I am at present engaged in an 
investigation, on independent principles, of the nature of 
money, rent, and taxes in an abstract form which some- 
times keeps me awake at night." 2 

These economic studies perhaps helped to interest 
him in the various philanthropic schemes of working- 
class education, in which he now began to take an active 
part. In 1854 we find him giving his first lectures to 
workmen in the decorative trade ; and in the same year 
began his connection with the Working Man's College, 
where he enlisted, under the Rev. Frederick Denison 
Maurice, in a gallant and not unsuccessful attempt to 
get into close touch with working men. For some years 

1 Modern Painters, vol. ii., p. 3. 

2 Collingwood, "Life and Work," i. 194. 



52 JOHN BUSKIN. 

he was most assiduous in his attendance at the drawing-, 
classes, and, even after he abandoned his regular tui-i 
tion, he maintained a close interest in this work. Such,, 
experiments, attended by the publication of simple hand- 
books, the " Elements of Drawing" (1856), and the 
"Elements of Perspective" (1859), may be taken as 
evidence that he had not yet abandoned all belief in the pos- 
sibility of an art revival among the people without any rad4 
ical disturbance of the present social and industrial order.: 
§ 14. The results of his recent economic studies 
began to take more definite shape in 1857, when, invited^ 
to lecture at the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, 
he chose for his subject " The Political Economy of 
Art." These lectures, afterwards incorporated in " A 
Joy for Ever," contain his first exposure of the essential 
defects of competitive commercialism in its bearing 
upon the production and distribution of that species of, 
wealth classed as art. Here for the first time we find 
the fundamentally socialistic assumption that it is the 
business of the State to educate, organise, and in every 
way economise, the artistic ability of the nation in order 
to get and keep for the national good the largest num- 
ber of the best works of art. Many of the schemes 
which find fuller development in after years are lightly 
sketched in these lectures, as, for example, the establish- 
ment of co-operative guilds of craftsmen responsible for 
the regulation of each skilled trade. But though the 
seeds of Mr. Ruskin's most " revolutionary " doctrines 
are all to be found in these discourses, there is no reason 
to suppose that their author was yet conscious of their 
full logical implications. The deep-rooted attachment^ 
to the existing order, and still deeper rooted distrust and 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 53 



1 alarm at the gospel of liberty and equality which stimu- 

I lated most of the agitations of the age, made him reluc- 

! tant to follow out the logical sequel of his thought. A 

j lecture given about this time thus represents his view, 

; « He thought existing social arrangements good, and he 

| agreed with his friends the Carlyles, who had found that 

it was only the incapable who could not get work " 1 — 

a shallow judgment which he was soon destined to 

abandon. 

§ 15. A rough but serviceable classification divides 
Mr. Ruskin's work and life before 1859-60 from the 
period which follows, assigning to the earlier period his 
art-work, to the latter his social work. The close of 
his fortieth year seems to have brought a growing sense 
of inward struggle. He seems to have " gone out into 
the wilderness," and to have been engaged in terrible 
conflict with those spectres of the mind which have 
always arisen to tempt prophets from the way which 
they should go. We have no such record of this spirit- 
ual conflict as Carlyle has given us of his valley-struggle, 
but Mr. Ruskin's " Everlasting Yea " was, if less boister- 
ously triumphant, more positive and definite in character 
than his master's. 

His social and economic criticism was now visibly 
quickening in his mind. A series of lectures written in 
the autumn of 1859, and suggested by strikes in the 
London building trades, formed the embryo of the papers 
which took final shape in "Unto this Last." In the 
literary history of Mr. Ruskin these papers are of pivotal 
importance. Thackeray, actuated partly by admiration 
of Mr. Ruskin's works, partly by private friendship, con- 
1 Life and Work, i. 214. 



54 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sented to insert them in CornJrill, which he was editing, i 
But after the first three had appeared, Thackeray wrote l 
to say that he could only insert one more, assigning as I 
his reason the unanimous condemnation of his reading : 
public. 

The interesting preface attached to " Unto this Last " 
shows the spirit in which Buskin took up this public 
challenge. The " gentle reader " gladly accepted Mr. 
Buskin as teacher of art ; his eloquent interpretation of 
pictures and architecture was entirely welcome ; but let ' 
the apostle of culture stick to his brush, and let him not ' 
attempt to instruct the hard-headed, practical English- 
man upon the conduct of his business life. 

What is Mr. Buskin's reply ? 

" The four following essays were published eighteen 
months ago in the Cornhill Magazine, and were repro- 
bated in a violent manner, as far as I could hear, by 
most of the readers they met with. Not a whit the less, ! 
I believe them to be the best, that is to say the truest, 
rightest worded, and most serviceable things I have ever I 
written." 

It might almost be said that he devoted the rest of 
his laborious life to substantiate this claim. The his- 
tory of literature contains no more heroic example of a 
single man fighting, almost alone, against the indiffer- | 
ence of the public and the unconcealed contempt of the ! 
mass of the educated classes : openly taunted as a fanat- 
ical ignoramus by arm-chair economists who dogmatised 
on the principles of political economy without possessing 
any practical acquaintance with the arts of production 
and consumption on which they theorised ; bewailed by 
his artistic and literary friends as one who had aban- 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 55 

doned himself to a wild and fruitless crusade ; accounted 
a Utopian dreamer by most of his readers, who condoned 
his offensive opinions on account of the beautiful lan- 
guage in which they were expressed. Against such a 
torrent of hostility, against such an impenetrable bul- 
wark of indifference or misunderstanding, Mr. Ruskin 
set himself in stout defiance for thirty years, essaying 
with every weapon of his literary arsenal to find an 
entrance to the heart and intellect of the people. As 
we cast our eyes down the list of his published writings, 
we still find that astonishing variety of subject-matter 
which we trace during his earlier years. But whatever 
the titles, whatever the immediate object — lectures 
upon the history of painting, rock formations, the tech- 
nique of drawing, poetry or prose fiction, education, 
religion, or war ; whatever the audience — Oxford under- 
graduates, Institute of Architects, business men, school- 
girls, working men, military students — the spirit of 
social criticism is always dominant, always inspiring, 
often overwhelming, the formal topic of his treatment. 
Though his theory of political economy underwent 
some modifications in later years, its substance is con- 
tained in " Unto this Last," which still ranks as the 
most powerful popular presentment of his critical as 
distinct from his constructive theory. This criticism is 
two-fanged ; on the one hand it is engaged in exposing 
the insufficiency and inconsistency of the current " Polit- 
ical Economy " considered as an explanation of existing 
industry, and on the other hand it assails the character 
of the industrial system — its waste, injustice, and inhu- 
manity. This double process is characteristic of Mr. 
Ruskin's criticism, though at certain places the two 



56 JOHN RUSKIN. 

streams flow together, namely, where political economy 
is arraigned for the support and approval it accords to 
the competitive basis of industrial activities. 

The remedial suggestions in " Unto this Last," slight 
though they are, indicate that even amid the early fer- 
ment of his destructive criticism he was already thinking 
out the new social order to be expounded in his later 
books. " Unto this Last," not merely in its thought but 
in its style, was too original to win early acceptance. 
Its conjunction of Mr. Ruskin's distinctive literary qual- 
ities, swift, close analysis of propositions, passionate 
appeal, biting humour, and quaint etymological research, 
was calculated to produce surprise but not conviction in 
the torpid mind of his " cultured " readers. 

§ 16. But Mr. Ruskin knew no discouragement. He 
planned in 1861 a new series of papers, which were to 
set in closer reason and somewhat ampler form the 
same substantial truths. The body of this work he 
accomplished at Mornex in the Alps, and the editor of 
Freezer's Magazine plucked up sufficient courage to prom- 
ise publication. But after three papers had appeared, 
the irate public and the publisher himself would have 
no more of "such rubbish." These lectures, the most 
brilliant and effective exposition of his social theory, 
were thus laid aside, and only in 1872 were republished 
under the title " Munera Pulveris." Mr. Ruskin's reply 
to such rebuffs may be read in the address he gave 
before the Institute of British Architects in 1865. This 
address is a formal abandonment of his earlier hopes 
for art and the art-mission to which he had set him- 
self; and it assigns as a reason for this change the 
necessity of a radical reconstruction of industrial society, 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 57 

as a prior condition of true progress in art. In the 
history of Mr. Ruskin's thought this is a most important 
document. Speaking to architects, he couches his indict- 
ment of the present disorder in an appropriate illustra- 
tion from the outward structure of the modern industrial 
town, and points his " moral " in the following words : 

" But our cities, built in black air which, by its accu- 
mulated foulness, first renders all ornament invisible in 
distance, and thus chokes its interstices with soot ; cities 
which are mere crowded masses of store, and warehouse, 
and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the world 
what the larder and cellar are to a private house ; cities 
in which the object of men is not life but labour ; and 
in which all chief magnitude of edifice is to enclose 
machinery ; cities in which the streets are not the ave- 
nues for the passing and procession of a happy people, 
but the drains for the discharge of a tormented mob, in 
which the only object in reaching any spot is to be 
transferred to another ; in which existence becomes mere 
transition, and every creature is only one atom in a drift 
of human dust and current of interchanging particles, 
circulating here by tunnels under ground, and there by 
tubes in the air ; for a city, or cities, such as this, no 
architecture is possible — nay, no desire of it is possible 
to their inhabitants." 1 

The personal conviction to which these passionate 
reflections lead their author is thus expressed : " For my 
own part I feel the force of mechanism and the fury of 
avaricious commerce to be at present so irresistible, that I 
have seceded from the study not only of architecture, 
but nearly of all art ; and have given myself, as I would 
1 On the Old Road, vol. i., § 277. 



58 JOHN BUSKIN. 

in a besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting 
bread and butter for its multitudes." * 

The genuineness of this renunciation is attested by 
the fact that for many years, indeed until the completion 
of " Fors Clavigera," he refused to have his early art- 
works reprinted, hoping thereby to give increased promi- 
nence to his social writings. But while Mr. Ruskin 
henceforth took " the condition of England " for his 
theme and made reform of economic structure a first 
consideration, he always shunned fanaticism. Those 
who speak of him as a " fanatic " do not measure words. ' 
A man who feels and speaks strongly is not necessarily j 
a fanatic. The unerring test of a fanatic is that he be- 
comes the slave of a fixed idea, the owner of a panacea 
which is applied indiscriminately to cure all evils. Now | 
Mr. Ruskin was never for one moment subject to this j 
narrowing tendency, the result of a distorted and defec- j 
tive vision. That he gave dramatic emphasis to the ' 
seamy side of modern civilisation, and denounced the 
evil more strenuously and persistently than he approved I 
the good, is no more than to say that he wore the cloak 
of a prophet and a practical reformer. But he never , 
allowed his passionate abhorrence of some particular j 
phase of evil to absorb his thoughts and his activity. | 
When the conviction of the essential dishonesty of the j 
competitive system of industry came home to him with ! 
its full force, it neither bred in him, as it has bred in ! 
many, a bitter class resentment, nor did it weaken his 
broad moral grasp of social problems, by impelling him j 
to trust overmuch to structural reforms. Even when he 
came to hold that " all social evils and religious errors 
1 On the Old Road, vol. i., § 291. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 59 

arise out of the pillage of the labourer by the idlers," * 
he never lost faith in the necessity of education as the 
hopeful method of redress. In a word, his social mission 
was distinctively an ethical rather than a political one ; 
and he never lost sight of the first requirement of all 
valid ethical teaching, the need " to see life steadily and 
see it whole." 

While the need of social honesty, and the conviction 
that the industrial order of the day rested upon dis- 
honesty, became the central ganglion of his system of 
teaching, he spent an ample share of his energy and in- 
tellect in tracing the course of the more distant nerves 
of the social body, their relations among themselves and 
to the centre, and the specific modes of health and 
disease which belong to each of them. The confusion, 
even chaos, of which some careless readers of Mr. Rus- 
kin complain, yields to a clear unity of system as we 
regard the meanderings of his versatile intelligence from 
the standpoint of social justice, a plea for honesty of 
transactions between man and man. This unity of sys- 
tem is not indeed a mechanical unity, an objective 
system of thought, but rather a unity imposed by per- 
sonal temperament and valuation. When we understand 
it, we understand John Ruskin, his personality, his view 
of life. Its worth consists in the variety, depth, and 
accuracy of the " sensations " it records, and their order- 
ing in accordance with prime principles of honesty and 
humanity. 

§ 17. These general remarks may afford some ex- 
planation of the nature of the change which took place 
in the period 1860-1865 in Mr. Ruskin's life. He did 
1 Fors, iv., Letter lxxxiv. 



GO JOHN BUSKIN. 

not abandon any of the interests which had occupied him 
in earlier years ; he still figures as art critic, litterateur, 
botanist, geologist, historian; but his intellectual and 
emotional centre of gravity is shifted, with an alteration 
in his sense of practical morality. 

All his future work really consisted of applications of 
this morality. 

In this spirit his lectures upon " Kings' Treasuries " 
and " Queens' Gardens," delivered in 1864 and published 
in the book " Sesame and Lilies," must be interpreted. 
" Mtmera Pulveris" had posited "certain conditions of 
moral culture " in individuals as essential to the achieve- 
ment of the reform of industrial society required by the 
true Political Economy. " Sesame and Lilies " is an 
attempt to teach these conditions to members of the 
pseudo-cultured classes. " The Crown of Wild Olive," 
a collection of lectures published in 1866, a takes as its 
special theme the question, What is Work ? tracing the 
chief implications of one of the leading thoughts of 
" Unto this Last," that the true end of work consists in 
making " wealth " and not in earning profits. Since Mr. 
Ruskin's technical indictment of false industry consists 
in his arraignment of competition as a false base, and 
since the raison d'etre of competition is individual profit, 
the central interest attaching to " The Crown of Wild 
Olive " lies in the full statement it contains of the fallacy 
of profit as the motive of industry. The stubborn and 
eloquent defence of war and militarism which he 
appends to this volume serves to show how, in shifting 
his centre of gravity, he had kept fast hold of some of 
the most debatable among his earlier judgments. 
1 Republished with another lecture and other new matter in 1873. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 61 

Mr. Ruskin's political economy, as we shall see, left 
the barrier between theory and practice peculiarly thin. 
The "Political Economy of Art" was full of " practical" 
suggestions, and the two broader treatises which followed 
possessed many fragments of constructive thought, while 
" The Crown of Wild Olive " contains an early draft of 
those practical reforms in education and in agriculture 1 
which were the objects of Mr. Ruskin's own experiments 
a few years later. The full pressure of his desire to do 
"something practical," and especially to get into close 
communion with intelligent working men, is seen in the 
series of letters addressed to a working cork-cutter in 
Sunderland, first published in the early months of 1867 
in the Manchester Examiner and the Leeds Mercury, and 
collected shortly afterwards in the volume entitled 
"Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne." Mr. Colling- 
wood speaks 2 of this book as " the central work of the 
life of John Ruskin," containing, as it does, his ripest 
and most important thoughts in their most widely ser- 
viceable form. In simpler language, to be " under- 
standed of the people," he sets forth the substantial 
criticism of " Munera Pulveris," but attaches to it, as a 
natural outgrowth, a full free account of a right social 
system, as he conceives it, and of the leading steps by 
which the necessary changes may be wrought. In par- 
ticular, " Time and Tide " is notable as containing three 
of the proposals which Mr. Ruskin deemed essential to 
a sound society, — a renovated Guild System, Captains 
of Industry, and State Regulation of Marriage and of 
Population. 

1 See Lecture iv. on " The Future of England.'' 

2 Life and Work, ii. 71. 



62 JOHN BUSKIN. 

§18. "Pore Clavigcra" was designed as complemen- 
tary to " Time and Tide," 1 relating to " the possible 
comforts and wholesome laws of familiar household life, 
and the share which a labouring nation may attain in the 
skill and the treasures of the higher arts." Such a sen- 
tence, however, gives a most inadequate suggestion of the 
real scope of " Fors," which is a miscellany of all his 
thoughts which relate directly or indirectly to social 
reform during the periods which they cover in their 
publication. 

The title " Fors Clavigcra," a noteworthy example of 
Mr. Ruskin's grave word-play, gives standing emphasis 
to the dominance of moral motives in all his social 
teaching. The triple meaning of " Fors," contained in 
the three English words Force, Fortitude, and Fortune, 
embodies the whole substance of this teaching, — the 
activity of manly exercise in work, capacity of endur- 
ance, and the Power outside ourselves which seems 
Fate or Providence, according as we regard its origin 
and nature. 

Purposely loose and even familiar in style, "Fors 
Clavigera" is charged with passionate earnestness from 
cover to cover. The pressure to go out and preach the 
gospel of social righteousness had grown almost un- 
bearable. The misery and injustice of the life he saw 
around him were goading him to action. In one of 
the earliest letters he writes thus : " I cannot paint, nor 
read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I 
like, and the very light of the morning sun has become 
hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and 
see signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination 
i See Preface to 1872 edition of " Time and Tide." 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 63 

can interpret too bitterly. Therefore I will endure it no 
longer quietly ; but henceforward, with any few or many 
who will help, do my poor best to abate this misery." J 

So far as any closer design is preserved, it may be 
stated in the following words from Letter xliii. : 

" The current and continual purpose of ' Fors Clavi- 
gera' is to explain the powers of chance or fortune 
(Fors) as she offers to men the conditions of prosperity; 
and as these conditions are accepted or refused, nails 
down and fastens their fate for ever, being thus ' Clavi- 
gera ' — ' nail bearing.' The image is one familiar in 
my theology ; my own conception of it was first got from 
Horace, and developed by steady effort to read history 
with impartiality and to observe the lives of men around 
me with charity. * How you may make your fortune or 
mar it' is the expansion of the title." 2 

At the outset, however, it is made evident that social 
reform in its practical aspects is to be the piece de resis- 
tance. There is, indeed, no close orderly adhesion to this 
or to any other theme in " Fors." During the years of 
its monthly appearance it supplied Mr. Ruskin with a 
free instrument of expression upon all sorts of passing 
events. 3 Topic after topic usurps the lead and holds it 
for a while, suddenly disappearing and anon taking its 
place again ; large scraps of early autobiography are 
embedded there, rich deposits of art-criticism, Bible 
commentary, heraldry, poetic criticism, suggestive words 
are tracked to their inmost lair, the elements of drawing 



1 Fors, i., Letter i. 2 Ibid., iv., Letter lxxxv. 

3 "By the adoption of the title 'Fors,' I meant (among other 
meanings) to indicate this desultory and accidental character of 
the work" (Letter lxxxv.). 



64 JOHN BUSKIN. 

and of several sciences are followed for a while. Wei. 
have, in fact, a faithful reflection of the multitudinous 
interests of this most fertile mind, given with an artless \ 
fidelity that makes " Fors Clavigera " one of the most 
valuable confessions in the whole of literature. But;] 
though other purposes often overlay the directly social \ 
teaching, this latter always reappears and occupies the,i 
largest space throughout the volumes. 

This teaching, however, no longer seeks merely to,: 
inform the mind or to inflame the heart with an under- \ 
standing of and a passion for social justice, it aims at 
directly stimulating readers to join him in experiments 
of practical reform. This is made clear in the open- 
ing letter (January, 1871) by the following declaration 
of his purpose : " I must clear myself from all sense of 
responsibility for the material distress around me, by 
explaining to you, in the shortest English I can, what I 
know of its causes ; by pointing out to you some of the 
methods by which it might be relieved ; and by setting 
aside regularly some small percentage* of my income, to 
assist, as one of yourselves, in what one and all we shall ;, 
have to do ; each of us laying by something, according 
to our means, for the common service; and having 
amongst us at last, be it ever so small, a National Store - 
instead of a National Debt." 1 This craving to " do j 1 
something practical" is the animating spirit of "Fors." 
To get a piece of land and to put upon it willing workers 
who should till the soil and ply useful handicrafts, living 5 
a wholesome family life in sound neighbourly co-opera- 
tion and with obedience to rightly established authority, 
with leisure and, mind to cultivate and practise the true 
1 Fors, i., Letter i. 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 65 

graces and joys of life — such an experiment in social 
[life Mr. Ruskin now strove to set on foot. The Society 
of St. George, formed to carry out this work, or to help 
;with sympathy and money, plays a large part throughout 
these letters, several of the early letters being devoted 
to denning the objects, method, and structure of the 
society. After a start in practical work was made next 
year, " Fors " serves as a chronicle of progress and an 
(instrument for discussing the various educational and in- 
dustrial projects which Mr. Ruskin hoped to further by 
Jineans of the Company. A statement of these schemes 
Jis reserved for a later chapter. Here we need only 
i observe that they form a sort of backbone to " Fors 
Clavigera," imposing a certain continuity of interest, 
and serving to emphasise the growing pressure to pass 
from theory into practice which beset Mr. Ruskin in 
his later years. The Company, once formed, also made 
a certain inner circle which he could address with the 
authoritative familiarity of a loved and recognised 
master, and whose education in the art of life was a 
constant object of solicitude. 

But this central position occupied by the work of 
St. George's Company did little to restrict the topics or 
the treatment of " Fors." The wider exoteric preaching 
of his social gospel, the driving home of the great truths 
of justice and humanity as he saw them in the multi- 
tudinous affairs of life, into as many minds as he could 
reach, by every method of appeal which the astounding 
versatility of his mind could command, is, after all, the 
prevailing character of " Fors." The fragmentary and 
irregular mode of its production, written as it was in 
every variety of place and circumstance, makes it a 



66 JOHN BUSKIN. 

peculiarly vivid and truthful reflection of innumerable 
facets of his mind, while the familiarity of its style gives 
much which the dignity of literature commonly con- 
ceals, the passing moods of thought and temper, the 
quick impulsive judgments of events as they pass by, 
an impressionism which, rightly interpreted, is among 
the greatest services a man of sensitive and widely cul- 
tivated tastes is able to confer. That portions of the 
later volumes of " Fors " are darkened by the gloom and 
even embittered by the anguish which for seasons dark- 
ened and distracted the mind of the author, is visible 
enough to every reader. But even through such pas- 
sages the ultimate and indomitable sanity of Mr. 
Ruskin's view of life shines with clear persistency; 
the confusion and obscurity is but occasional and 
superficial. On the whole, " Fors Clavigera " holds 
a unique position not only in Mr. Ruskin's writings^ 
but in modern literature. Crowded with brilliant and 
pertinent satire, with tenderest and most penetrative; 
pathos, with cunning researches into words and things, 
with profound analysis of cause and effect in life, it is 
the fullest, freest, and, on the whole, the most effective 
" criticism of life" in England of the nineteenth century! 
that we possess. Like all great books, it must be taken 
as a whole ; for, in spite of large irregularities of formi 
and wide gaps of time in its composition, it is a whole 
by virtue of the unity of that personality of which it is 
the most truthful expression. 

In making this claim for " Fors " we must of course 
insist that its focus and its object shall be kept in mind, 
and that the criterion of unity and effectiveness applied 
to it shall be those rightly applicable to works of auto- 



FROM ART TO SOCIAL REFORM. 67 

biographic form, and not those which are applied to 
books whose composition proceeds by carefully ironing 
out every crease of inconsistency so as to present a 
smooth finality of well-ordered thought. 

This position of importance I claim for " Fors " 
because it contains the fullest and most mature pre- 
sentment of the social teaching of the man who, by 
the conjunction of the keenest sense of justice with 
the widest culture and the finest gifts of literary 
expression, has succeeded in telling our age more of 
the truths it most requires to know than any other 
man. 

In Mr. Ruskin's own works it occupies an architec- 
tonic place, marking his highest and fullest growth of 
thought. 

The following passage from the last volume of 
"Fors" gives succinctly Mr. Ruskin's own view of the 
development of his teaching through his fiYQ most rep- 
resentative works. 

" * Modern Painters ' taught the claim of all lower 
nature in the hearts of men ; of the rock, and wave 
and herb, as a part of their necessary spirit life ; in all 
that I now bid you to do, to dress the earth and keep 
it, I am fulfilling what I then began. The ' Stones of 
Venice' taught the laws of constructive art, and the 
dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, 
on the happy life of the workman. ' Unto this Last ' 
taught the laws of that life itself, and its dependence on 
the Sun of Justice ; the < Inaugural Oxford Lectures,' the 
necessity that it should be led, and the gracious laws of 
beauty and labour recognised, by the upper, no less than 
the lower, classes of England ; and, lastly, ' Fors Clavi- 



68 JOHN BUSKIN. 

gera ' has declared the relation of these to each other, 
and the only possible conditions of peace and honour, 
for low and high, rich and poor, together in the holding 
of that first Estate, under the only Despot, God, from 
which, whoso falls, angel or man, is kept, not myth- 
ically nor disputably, but here in visible horror of 
chains under darkness to the judgment of the great 
day : and in keeping which service is perfect freedom, 
and inheritance of all that a loving Creator can give 
to His creatures, and an immortal Father to His 
children." 1 

Such is the general growth of Mr. Ruskin's thought 
and labours, from Nature to Art, through Art to Hu- 
man Life, in the Art of Life a growing sense of the 
demands of Eternal Law in the making and governance 
of Human Society founded on principles of justice and 
humanity. 

1 Fors 1 Letter lxxviii., vol. iv. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE INDICTMENT OF CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

§ 1. Qualifications for Political Economy — A trained specialist in 
fine work and its products. § 2. A master of words and their 
meanings. § 3. Sincerity of sight and speech. § 4. A great 
analytic genius. § 5. Two heads of the indictment. § 6. False 
assumption of an "economic man." §7. The mechanical 
treatment of an organic problem. § 8. Attempted human isa- 
tion of the " economic man " theory. § 9. Can there be a science 
of " getting and spending ?" § 10. Political versus Mercantile 
Economy. § 11. Wealth rightly includes " all useful or pleas- 
urable things." § 12. Wealth measured by life not by money. 
§ 13. True utility, not passing desires, the standard of 
wealth. § 14. Organic conception of society essential to 
"Political" Economy. §15. Production of "souls of a 
good quality" the economic goal. § 16. The higher Utilita- 
rianism of Mr. Kuskin. § 17. His pioneer work in social 
economics. 

§ 1. There is a curious notion still widely prevalent, 
that Mr. Kuskin abandoned his proper work as an art 
teacher in order rashly to embark in Political Economy, 
for which he had neither natural aptitude nor the requi- 
site training and knowledge. In order to show how ill 
founded such a notion is, it may be well to enumerate 
some of the special qualifications he possessed for this 
work of social and economic criticism. Political Econ- 
omy, even in that narrow connotation of industrial sci- 
ence from which Mr. Ruskin sought to release it, takes 
for its subject-matter the work which men put into the 



70 JOHN RUSItlN. 

raw material supplied by Nature in order to furnish nec- 
essaries or conveniences for human consumption. Now 
Mr. Ruskin's first qualification is that of being a skilled 
specialist in the finer qualities of work on the one hand, 
and of enjoyment or consumption on the other hand. 
Both from personal practice and from long habits of 
close observation of the work of skilful men in many 
places, he obtained a wide and varied knowledge of the 
handling of different tools and materials for the produc- 
tion of useful and beautiful goods. This experience was 
by no means confined to painting, sculpture, and the so- 
called " fine arts," but comprised the practical work of 
architecture, wood and metal work, pottery, jewellery, 
weaving, and other handicrafts. 

His investigations into agriculture, both on the Con- 
tinent of Europe and in Britain, were minute and pains- 
taking; and though his experiments in reclaiming and 
draining land were not always successful, they indicated 
close knowledge of the concrete facts. 

Moreover, Mr. Ruskin made a life-long study of ani- 
mal and vegetable life, and of the structure and compo- 
sition of the earth, thus gaining an intimate acquaint- 
ance with the nature of the raw materials of that wealth 
which formed the chief subject-matter of commercial 
economy. He had spent most of his laborious life in 
patient detailed observation of nature and the works of 
man. Both from contemporary observation and from 
study of history, the actual processes by which large 
classes of goods were produced and consumed were fa- 
miliar to him. How many of the teachers of Political 
Economy who have been so scornful of Mr. Ruskin's 
claims possessed a tithe of this practical knowledge ? 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 71 

I How many of them had studied the growth of the dif- 
ferent arts and handicrafts in the history of nature as 
1 he had studied them ? Most of those who sought to 
I laugh him out of the field of controversy, or to ignore 
i him, were either arm-chair economists, whose knowledge 
I of present industrial facts was almost entirely drawn 
from books, and whose acquaintance with industrial his- 
tory, even from books, was then extremely slight, or else 
business men engaged in some special branch of machine 
production or finance, whose personal knowledge, sound 
! enough doubtless within its limits, covered but a very 
;i small section of the whole industrial field. Of certain 
I large typical modern forms of industry Mr. Ruskin in- 
deed possessed neither experience nor special knowledge ; 
but how many of our most authoritative writers on Polit- 
ical Economy have ever had their training in a cotton- 
mill, a mine, a merchant's office, or a retail shop ? So far 
| as first-hand knowledge of work and its results is con- 
i cerned, Mr. Ruskin enjoyed an immense superiority over 
his opponents. 

§ 2. Another advantage which Mr. Ruskin enjoyed in 
a supreme degree was his mastery of language. In no 
study have " masked words " (to adopt his own familiar 
phrase) played so much havoc as in Political Economy ; 
nowhere have " idols of the market-place " so often dark- 
ened counsel, pompous well-rounded phrases, which, 
usurping the dignity of scientific laws, browbeat the 
humble inquirer who seeks to get behind them to the 
facts they claim to represent. 

This defect was inevitable in a science hastily impro- 
vised by gathering together the general results of a num- 
ber of previously unrelated studies of agriculture, finance 



72 JOHN BUSKIN. 

and taxation, political philosophy, foreign trade, popula- 
tion, etc., into a science of " the wealth of nations," 
drawing its terminology partly from current politics, 
partly from philosophic text-books, and largely from the 
loose language of actual business intercourse. That 
much of the reasoning conducted by means of such ill- 
arranged and shifty terms should be illicit was inevitable, j 
and it can be no matter for surprise that text-books of 
Political Economy should be largely occupied in detect- ; 
ing the loose arguments of predecessors based upon 
verbal duplicity, and in constructing, by similar meth- 
ods, new arguments, destined in their turn to similar 
treatment by some not remote successor. Now in such 
a study Mr. Ruskin's finely trained instinct for language 
served him well. His passion of delving down to roots 
sometimes, it may be admitted, led him into false paths, 
and some of his work of literary " restoration " was too 
fantastic to be really serviceable. But, making all al- 
lowance for the deceitfulness of philology, his habit of 
intelligent scrutiny applied to such terms as "value," ! 
" capital," " profit," " consumption," was really useful in 
exposing the ambiguity and falsification of facts to which ! 
these terms have lent themselves. 

§ 3. Two other intellectual and moral qualities belong- \ 
ing to Mr. Ruskin's equipment deserve a word. First, ! 
his fearless honesty in dealing with all seen facts. No ' 
one who has faithfully followed the development of Po- 
litical Economy can have failed to note how political or 
business interests, or else some academic bias, have 
warped and distorted the free natural growth of the 
study, making it subservient to the conveniences of some 
class or party cause. Now, Mr. Ruskin's absolute sin- \ 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 73 

cerity of sight and speech was quite unimpaired by such 
obscuring or distorting influences. Neither was he ever 
found servile to authority, though generally willing to 
defer to the reasonable and well-grounded judgment of 
others. The same originality by which he claimed to 
set aside the wrongful authority of Reynolds in art, he 
applied to the authority of Ricardo and Mill in Political 
Economy. This fearless exposure of insufficiently estab- 
lished authority, this insistence upon the right of inde- 
pendent inquiry into facts and principles, which is 
undeniably the source of his most valuable achievements 
as art critic, was equally serviceable in Political Econ- 
omy, where the extreme paucity of intellects belonging 
to the first order had foisted into the seat of authority 
names quite undeserving of such high consideration. 

§ 4. Finally, without endorsing the claim that Mr. 
Ruskin is "the most analytic mind in Europe," all 
who have closely read his books from " Modern 
Painters " on to " Fors Clavigera " must admit his 
wonderful faculty of minute analysis. How many 
Englishmen of this century have evinced such intel- 
lectual vigour and subtlety as appears in the philosophic 
handling of the origins of art in the second volume of 
" Modern Painters," or such genius for classification as 
appears in " The Seven Lamps of Architecture " ? This 
same faculty, heightened by wide experience, Mr. Ruskin 
brought to bear upon social science. When we consider 
his combats at close quarters with trained economists, 
we shall see how well he was able to hold his own, and 
though his constructive reasoning may not always prove 
sound, his exposure of the fallacious reasoning of others 
is generally forcible and convincing. 



74 JOHN BUSKIN. 

The foregoing considerations will serve to dispel the 
popular illusion which represents Mr. Ruskin as an ill- 
equipped knight-errant entering the lists of economic 
controversy in a spirit of sentimental bravado. Alike 
in possession of material facts, in command of language, 
and in trained capacity of argument, he was quite com- 
petent to discuss economic problems with Senior, Faw- 
cett, and J. S. Mill. His leading defects he only shared 
in common with most economists of the last generation, 
viz., a lack of opportunity of early free contact with the 
labouring classes, whose work and life is of prime im- 
portance in economic study, and an insufficient grasp 
of evolution in the structure of industrial and political 
institutions. 

§ 5. Even had Mr. Ruskin, accepting the limits of 
economic science laid down by earlier authorities, con- 
fined himself to criticism of the inconsistencies and 
errors to be found there, the powers we have enumer- 
ated would have enabled him to do yeoman's service. 
But in the far larger task to which he set himself these 
rare qualities of nature and experience were of unique 
value. 

His arraignment of current Political Economy may be 
formally divided into two parts. Firstly, he accuses the 
science of commercial wealth of wrongfully assuming 
the title and function of Political Economy. Secondly, 
he impugns the accuracy of many of the fundamental 
doctrines of this commercial science, and imputes to 
them an injurious influence upon the happiness and 
morality of society. 

Under this latter count may be included the attack 
which he makes upon the justice and the utility of 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 75 

industry conducted competitively for individual profit; 
J for the gravamen of this indictment of Political Economy 
' has reference chiefly to the support it has yielded to the 
; existing industrial system. The first head of the indict- 
j ment alone will occupy this chapter. 

§ 6. Failure to understand the nature of Mr. Ruskin's 
attack has led many to assert that he has wrongfully 
| imported sentiment into matters where it has no proper 
| place. This charge, however, boldly begs the question, 
; for his contention is, firstly, that sentiment does rightly 
I enter, and ultimately dominates, a true science of Po- 
' litical Economy; and, secondly, that current Political 
' Economy is largely sentimental both in its origin and 
influence, but that its sentiments are false. 

First let us turn to the charge he brings against cur- 
rent Political Economy of wrongly arrogating to itself 
this title. The subject-matter of this " science " consists 
of " wealth " defined as " utilities embodied in material 
objects," and possessing a money value. Here are two 
assumptions, first that wealth is rightly confined to ma- 
terial embodiments, and secondly that it is to be estimated 
by reference to a monetary standard. 

Researches into the right meaning of the terms 
" wealth " and " value " form the most vital criticism 
of "Unto this Last." Mr. Ruskin's mode of etymo- 
logical inquiry, with its frequent assertion of fanciful 
analogies and its undue emphasis on roots, should not 
mislead us into supposing that the distinctions he makes 
are « purely verbal." In reality he always looks through 
words to things. In his pertinent question, " What right 
have you to take the word < wealth,' which originally 
meant < well-being,' and degrade and narrow it by con- 



76 .JOHN BUSKIN. 

lining it to certain sorts of material objects measured by 
money?" he is not ultimately concerned with the per- 
version of a word, but with the perversion of an idea. 
His real arraignment is of the process of segmentation, |s 
which takes a particular sort of material objects as a 
subject of separate scientific investigation, and professes |) 
to found upon such science an art of national and in- 
dividual conduct. For it must be distinctly understood 'I 
that Political Economy has always claimed to be both a 
science and an art, — the art being, as is only natural, ) 
historically prior to the science. 

Now Mr. Ruskin does not deny that a hypothetical ; 
science may be framed, upon the assumptions that every 
man is idle and covetous, and that the maximum quantity « 
of wealth embodied in material forms and measured by I 
money is the sole object of his endeavour, in order to 
investigate the laws of the production and distribution 
of such wealth. A science based on these assumptions '• 
as to the nature and aim of men may be consistent in 
its parts and correct in its reasoning. But when he is 
invited to accept this as a science relating to actually f* 
existent men and their conduct, Mr. Ruskin flatly refuses 
to do so. How, he asks, if man be not wholly idle i 
and " a covetous machine," but is endowed with a liking n 
for good work and a capacity of self-sacrifice, is notf 
moved entirely by money but also by affections, seeks n 
not only material marketable goods but other goods that 
are neither material nor marketable ? What is the use f 
of a science which begins by assuming that man is what 
he is not ? 

In " Unto this Last," Mr. Ruskin unduly presses the 
charge that political economists assert the existence of 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 77 

this economic man, and the utility of covetous action. 
The most rigid of the old economists, with their doctrine 
of the social utility of enlightened selfishness, would have 
admitted that the " economic man " was more or less a 
hypothetical creature. But Mr. Ruskin's over-pressure 
of this point does not really impair the validity of his 
criticism. The statement of the assumption of orthodox 
Political Economy contained in a quotation at the opening 
of " Unto this Last," is a substantially correct account of 
the prevailing mode of " working " the science : 

"The social affections are accidental and disturbing 
elements in human nature ; but avarice and the desire 
of progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the 
inconstants, and, considering the human being merely 
as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of labour, 
purchase, and sale the greatest accumulative result in 
wealth is obtainable. Those laws once determined, it 
will be for each individual afterwards to introduce as 
much of the disturbing affectionate element as he 
chooses, and to determine for himself the result in the 
new conditions supposed." 1 

The pages of such writers as James Mill, M'Culloch, 
and Ricardo furnish ample verification of this descrip- 
tion of the method of argument in common use. First 
work out your problem by isolating the self-seeking 
forces, and afterwards make allowance for the " dis- 
turbing influence " of other motives. Indeed, only by 
such method of procedure could the old economic 
"laws" be made plausible. 

§ 7. Mr. Ruskin laid his finger accurately upon the 
root-fallacy of this mode of reasoning. It is found to 

*P. 2. 



78 JOHN BUSKIN. 






reside in the assumption that " the accidentals after- j 
wards to be introduced were of the same nature as the 
powers first examined," •'. e, " allowance for friction " 
will work correctly in a mechanical problem where all 
the forces can be subjected to quantitative measurement, 
and where the problem is essentially mathematical, but 
it will work wrongly when the forces differ qualitatively, i 
and are combined not mechanically but organically. It 
is not, however, difficult to understand how a purely , 
mechanical science of Political Economy seemed plau- 
sible to those who confined their attention to certain 
large fields of industry in the earlier nineteenth cen- 
tury. In most departments of the new manufacturing 
industries, in mining, railways, and many branches of 
'low skilled manual labour, generally in trade and in 
finance, the desire to " buy in the cheapest and sell 
in the dearest market," to " do as little as one could . 
and get as much," was, in fact, so general, so persistent, 
and so dominant that, in considering the production and 
distribution of these sorts of wealth, all other motives 
seemed negligible quantities. Once assume, and in all 
those cases the assumption seemed not unreasonable, 
that work is in itself and for itself both undesired and 
undesirable, and that the sole object of such industrial ! 
energy is to get the highest wages and profits that are j 
obtainable, the " covetous machine " idea of Political 
Economy seemed intelligible. If all industrial energy 
both did and necessarily must conform to this type, a 
science of Industry might reasonably be founded upon ; 
the assumptions actually made, though even then the 
claim of such a science to be Political Economy would 
be open to challenge. The economic problem, as it i 



CUBBENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 79 

presented itself in practice to the average mill-manager 
half a century ago, was of a purely mathematical order, 
how to buy at cheapest price the raw materials, coal, 
machinery, and labour power, requisite for turning out 
his goods, and how to find a ready market for them 
at the price which would yield the largest margin of 
profit. The idea of allowing considerations of humanity 
to affect the price at which he bought the commodity 
of labour did not normally enter his mind, and the 
notion that owing to the peculiar nature of the human 
machine it might actually " pay " in the long run to 
give wages above the lowest competitive standard, was a 
daring novelty that had not reached the average sensual 
man. Since the buying, the handling in various mechani- 
cal processes, and the selling of quantities of goods was 
to the individual business man a matter of calculation 
upon the strict economic assumptions we have indicated, 
it seemed not unreasonable to Ricardo, Mill, and other 
believers in the universal application of the " inductive 
method " to generalise from this experience of the single 
business man to business as a system. Thus it was that 
the old economics, with its purely mathematical applica- 
tions of a Law of Rent, a Wage Fund, a Law of 
Population, etc., came to hold the field. 

§ 8. Now, Mr. Ruskin approached the problem from 
an entirely new point of view. Even the narrow conno- 
tation given to wealth and industry by the economists 
included many kinds of work and many commodities 
which were not found to conform accurately to the 
general laws of their system. Mr. Ruskin had early 
come to recognise that work is not an evil to be 
shunned, but a good to be desired, provided it is in 



80 JOHN RUSKIN. 

kind and quantity desirable ; and he was himself famil- 
iar with many kinds of work engaged in producing the 
finest kind of material wealth which did not at all 
accord with the assumption of the political economist. 
Not only in the fine arts, where work may be a source 
of supreme delight, but in the professions, and in many 
handicrafts, he saw that the assumption of the natural 
and normal idleness of man was false, and that profit or 
money wage was in many cases not the only or the 
strongest incentive to industry. Convinced also that an 
educated and well-ordered society could, both by the 
direction of industry and by the reaction of refined 
tastes upon the production of wealth, indefinitely in- 
crease the proportion of work which should conform 
to this higher standard, he denied the normal and 
eternal validity of the economic laws which were 
derived from an exclusive observation of the lower 
grades of industry during a period of transition. This 
was the first of a series of radical objections urged by 
Mr. Ruskin against the current teaching, viz., that its 
fundamental assumption of human motive visibly broke 
down when applied to large departments of industrial 
activity. 

The attack of Mr. Ruskin and other critics upon the 
unscientific method of abstracting certain purely " eco- 
nomic" forces, and making allowance later on for the 
friction of other non-economic forces separately esti- 
mated, has operated in leading later teachers to endeav- 
our to " humanise " their science by admitting into the 
order of economic forces all sorts of motives which affect 
man in getting and spending money, and which are 
measurable in money. Professor Marshall, for example, 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 81 

i is willing to include in his economic investigations the 
I ¥ affections " and other " disturbing influences," just in 
' bo far as they can be placed upon a common economic 
'footing with the main driving forces of idleness and 
j greed. 

If early local attachments, for example, tend to keep 
i a man at work in his native village, and this tendency 
i can only be overcome by a certain remuneration, these 
I feelings of attachment are economically represented by 
the increment of money wage which is sufficient to 
! induce him to leave his village for work in the neigh- 
bouring town. So, in the spending of money, it is 
| possible to compare and measure the desire for material 
■ wealth" with a desire of a wholly different order: a 
person attending a missionary meeting with ten shillings 
in his pocket, who decides to give five shillings as a sub- 
scription, spending the other five upon his lunch, must 
be considered to have an exactly balanced effective desire 
for the spread of Christianity and the satisfaction of his 
appetite. A careful and rightly-specialised collection of 
" statistics " will, it is suggested, enable us to measure 
the economic value of the affections and desires of every 
sort in so far as they are reflected in our estimates of 
money. It must be at once conceded that we can and 
habitually do make comparisons of desires widely differ- 
ing in kind and degree by reference to money, and the 
new method, so far as it is applicable, appears to meet 
Mr. Ruskin's demand that the accidental or disturbing 
forces must be of the same nature as the primitive forces. 
§ 9. Assuming, therefore, that the phenomena of buy- 
ing and selling, and the industrial activities to which they 
| have reference, can be conveniently isolated, it is legit- 



82 JOHN BUSKIN. 

imate to make them the subject of a separate science. 
But can they be conveniently isolated, and if so, is the 
science which deals with them to be called Political 
Economy ? Such are the questions which arise next 
in logical order. Since unity in the phenomena of the 
universe and in human knowledge is an essential con- 
dition of all science, it is often rightly urged that only 
one science exists. The recognition of many sciences 
is a matter of convenience which posits a certain sacri- 
fice of exactitude. The exact demarcation of scientific 
boundaries is a constant matter of dispute. The con- 
tention of the supporters of a science of Industry is that 
the phenomena with which it is concerned are suffi 
ciently like one another and unlike other phenomena 
to form the object of a separate science. That this 
science will impinge upon other sciences, e. g. ethics and 
politics and hygiene, is admitted. But this impact is 
not so frequent and so constant as to destroy the virtual 
independence of industrial phenomena. 
\ Now there are many difficulties in the way of admit- 
ting this virtual independence. If we regard the prota 
lem on the side of " production," the organic charactei 
of man obliges us to insist that every act of his life has 
an effect, and often an important one, upon his produc J 
tive powers for good or evil in various ways. IntemperJ 
ance, the exercise of football, the kind of books he reads, 
the friendships he forms, and a thousand other more 
detailed habits and acts of a non-economic nature, 
directly affect him as a worker. The modern economist 
replies, " Well, in so far as they affect the money-value 
of his work and the wages he gets, we will considei 
them." Similarly with the problem on the " consump- 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 83 

tion " side : every individual peculiarity of nature, hab- 
its, etc., will affect those desires which find expression 
in the way he spends his money. " Well," says the 
modern economist, " let us consider them so far as they 
are reflected in his demand for commodities." 

This sounds plausible, and is perhaps feasible, and yet 
it is noteworthy that these very economists who claim 
that Political Economy is confined to the investigation of 
the ways in which a man makes and spends his income, 
do not, in fact, confine their treatment of the life and 
character of man to his desires reflected in money. 
Having abandoned the old economic man, and striving 
to see man as he is, they are almost inevitably drawn 
away from their investigation of him as a " getting and 
spending " animal to the direct consideration of various 
other conditions of his life which underlie his getting 
and spending processes. In the early economists this 
inconsistency was confined to occasional pious or hu- 
mane reflections or aspirations, but J. S. Mill having 
set the example of elaborate dissertations upon methods 
of social reform and the future of the labouring classes, 
has been generally followed by later writers. It is true 
that these speculations and humane disquisitions have 
something to do with the getting and spending of money ; 
but it is not true that the social problems there discussed 
— the influence of machinery, the eight-hours day, the 
possibilities of co-operation, the functions of the State — 
are discussed in direct or sole reference to " getting and 
spending." On the contrary, various non-economic goods, 
such as leisure, honesty, intellectual and aesthetic tastes, 
friendship and the social virtues, are treated not as 
economic factors actually ascertained in their monetary 



84 JOHN RUSKIN. 

influence, but as human functions which have some defi- 
nite relations of their own to the functions of production 
and consumption. Now, when an economist discusses 
the reactionary influence of contentment, leisure, domes- 
tic happiness upon the wealth-producing faculties in an 
a priori way, or when he points out how raising the 
character of civic life will react upon the efficiency of 
industry, his arguments are so many tacit admissions 
that the segregation of purely industrial phenomena is 
not, in fact, the convenient hypothesis for Political 
Economy which he averred it was. 

But perhaps the most convincing testimony to the 
loose-jointedness of the current economic science was 
afforded by the astounding diversity of meaning attach- 
ing to the term in general use to describe the subject- 
matter of that science. Mr. Ruskin has indeed most 
ample ground for his sarcastic commentary upon J. S. 
Mill's declaration, that " Every one has a notion, suffi- 
ciently correct for common purposes, of what is meant 
by wealth." * In fact, we find almost every economist 
with a special definition of his own; some including 
everything with an exchange-value whether it is mate- 
rial or not, others excluding non-material goods ; some 
including, others excluding, human skill, honesty, and 
serviceable human qualities ; some insisting upon perma- 
nency as a condition of wealth. Whatever definition is 
taken, new difficulties arise by reason of the shifting 
character of industry and social institutions. The lib- 
eration of slaves causes a reduction of national wealth, 
the enclosure of common lands an increase ; when brew- 
ing and baking are no longer done at home new indus- 

1 J. S. Mill, "Principles of Political Economy," Introd., p. 2. 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 85 

tries and new orders of industrial wealth come into 
being. Most of the work of women, domestic in char- 
acter, is not " productive of wealth " because its results 
are not exchangeable. The natural resources of a coun- 
try, its climate and conformation, its rivers, etc., are 
they to be classed as wealth? The highways, public 
buildings, and other strictly non-saleable property, in 
what sense is it wealth ? 

Such questions, and they may be multiplied almost 
indefinitely, indicate that " wealth " and " the industrial 
system " are not such clearly separable divisions of the 
totality of things as could be desired for the establish- 
ment of a science. The actual and increasing trans- 
gressions made by political economists outside the limits 
laid down by their own definition are a most convincing, 
because an unconscious, testimony to the uncertainty of 
their position. 

§ 10. It is not, however, essential to Mr. Ruskin's 
position to deny that " the industrial system " can be 
made the subject of a special study. There might be a 
science of marketable goods estimated at market prices. 
But he repudiates the claim of such a science to be 
called " Political Economy," as he also denies its ability 
to impose any rule of conduct upon life. If such a 
science exist, let it be called what it actually is, Mercan- 
tile Economy. 1 

Against this Mercantile Science, the science of avarice, 
as he conceives it, Mr. Ruskin places Political Economy, 
which he says " consists simply in the production, preser- 
vation, and distribution, at fittest time and place, of 
useful or pleasurable things." 2 

1 Unto this Last, p. 41. 2 Ibid., p. 41. 



Ob JOHN RUSKIN. 

Mr. Ruskin habitually ignores the academic question 
how far Political Economy is a science, how far an art. 
An " economy " of any kind, he would urge, is distinct- 
ively " a doing," but as it is " a doing " which implies not 
only a knowing how to do but a knowing what the results 
of doing will be, it may be said to contain a science. In 
reality he is justified in ignoring the distinction by the 
all-embracing character of Political Economy as he con- 
ceives it. Though the science of making money may be 
distinguished from the art, the " laws " of the one being 
in the indicative, the laws of the other in the imperative 
mood, the same does not hold when Political Economy 
is at once the science and art of life. An individual or 
a nation which knows the laws of making and spending 
money may not wish to determine expenditure or taxa- 
tion in sole accord with rules deducible from these laws ; 
but a valid science of the " production, preservation, and 
distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful and 
pleasurable things," implies the practice of the art. 

§ 11. This vital distinction between Mercantile and 
Political Economy brings us to the very heart of Mr. 
Ruskin's social criticism. His Political Economy stands 
not one but two removes from the current teaching. 

In the first place it breaks down the barrier separating 
industrial processes from other serviceable human activ- 
ities, bringing under wealth " all useful or pleasurable 
things," whether exchangeable or not, and bringing 
under production of wealth all wholesome human en- 
ergies. Though, in his earlier treatment, Mr. Ruskin 
occasionally wavers, showing a disposition to confine his 
Political Economy to the same " industrial " activities 
which form the subject-matter of Mercantile Economy, 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 87 

only substituting a standard of justice and humanity for 
the accepted " commercial " standard, this is no more 
than a dialectical position temporarily occupied for 
" fighting purposes." His full, final conception of Politi- 
cal Economy, as a science of human welfare, includes 
within its scope not merely the processes by which men 
gain a livelihood, but all human efforts and satisfactions. 
Mercantile Economy claims to concern itself with the 
processes by which men earn a living. But what is a 
• living ? asks Mr. Ruskin, and answering with Words- 
j worth, " We live by admiration, hope, and love," he 
I demands that Political Economy shall take direct cogni- 
I sance of this higher livelihood. 

This treatment is based, not upon a " sentimental," 
but upon a strictly scientific criticism. Mercantile 
Economy assumes that man as an industrial animal, a 
getter and spender of money, is a separate being from 
man as a friend, a lover, a father, a citizen, or that he 
can conveniently and justifiably be regarded as separate 
for " economic " treatment. Now Mr. Ruskin insists 
that the organic unity of a man as a conscious, rational 
being, with a capacity for regarding his life as a whole 
and forming a plan for its conduct, imposes a correspond- 
ing unity upon the science which is to treat of human 
conduct, that the interaction of conscious forces within 
man is so constant and so intricate that it is not really 
convenient to make the separatist assumption required 
by Mercantile Economy. " Goods " which are not 
r wealth " in the " mercantile " sense, the fruits of good- 
will and self-sacrifice, friendship, family affection, neigh- 
bourly or civic feeling, intellectual efforts, not destined 
for the market, are, both in their " production " and their 



88 JOHN BUSKIN. 

" consumption,' ' in vital relation to industrial goods. j 
The activities employed upon such " goods " have the 
most intimate reaction upon the distinctively " industrial ■] 
activities, while the enjoyment of these higher moral and 
intellectual goods is a chief determinant of the nature of 
demand for mercantile wares. This deep essential truth 
Mr. Ruskin illustrates by taking the instance of domestic I 
service, and showing that the best work cannot be got 
out of a servant by treating his labour as a mere market- , 
able commodity, and ignoring the personality or " soul," . 
which necessarily enters into services. So, enlarging on 
the theme, he shows how every sort of work given out 
in industrial processes is in its nature and result the 
expression, not of an " economic man," a human mech- 
anism, but of a conscious, rational, and emotional being. 
The appeal is made not to a mere cluster of self-seeking 
industrial instincts, but to the whole nature of man, and; 
it is the whole man who in some sense responds. Treat 
a man as something less than a man and you fail to get, 
even the best industrial results out of him. Why ? Not 
merely because you ought, as a fellow-creature, to treat 
him with due regard to moral obligations, but because 
you are proceeding on a wrong hypothesis. The assump- ; 
tion, then, of the economist in theory, and of the business 
man in practice, that a " worker " may conveniently be | 
treated simply as a repository of a certain sort of labour- 
power, to be elicited by wages in order to be stored in 
material wares, is a false assumption which invalidates 
the subsequent reasonings of the theorist, as it impairs i 
the practice of the entrepreneur. The attempt to make 
a separate science of industrial wealth, based upon the 
conviction that man's actions in the getting and spend- 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 89 

ing of money form what Professor Marshall calls " a 
tolerably homogeneous group," breaks down, because the 
organic unity of man is too strong for this separatist 
treatment. Industry is a department of the conduct of 
life which is not sufficiently distinct from other depart- 
ments to form the subject-matter of a separate science. 
All this line of criticism is brought to a head by Mr. 
Ruskin in his indictment of the narrowing down of the 
term Wealth to signify an accumulation of material 
marketable goods. The philological reference which 
identifies wealth with human welfare is not a mere play 
of fancy, but an assertion of the testimony of language 
to that substantial truth of the unity of human life and 
conduct which has been implicitly denied by the degra- 
dation which the term has undergone. 

§ 12. The next essential reform in Political Economy 
is the deposition of the money-standard of value and 
the substitution of a vital standard. This gives us the 
deepest line of cleavage between Mr. Ruskin's Political 
Economy and that of the " orthodox " teachers. The 
value of any stock of mercantile wealth is to the latter 
what it will fetch in money or in other goods if it is 
sold. [Value, according to Mr. Ruskin, consists in the 
power to sustain life. " To be valuable is to avail 
towards life."J. In a word, he proposes to substitute for 
the money-measurement of wealth adopted by the busi- 
ness man and the mercantile economist a standard of 
human utility. According to the mercantile economy, 
a cask of raw whisky or a roulette-table has the same 
value as a stack of corn or a shelf-full of " best books," 
if it commands the same price in the market ; the fact 
that the former commodities get their value from de- 



90 JOHN RUSKIN. 

praved tastes and injure human life by their " consump- 
tion," while the latter serve to maintain physical and 
intellectual life, does not affect their value. Now, 
economists from early times had distinguished between 
exchange-value and value-in-use. But orthodox prac- 
tice had taken exchange-value as the central point of 
theory, following the practice of the business man. The 
latter is not, as " economic man," concerned with the 
capacity of his wares to satisfy the purposes of human 
life ; if there is an " effective demand " for the goods he 
makes or deals in, that is enough for him. As to the 
results of the consumption of his goods, that is the pur- 
chaser's look-out. Caveat emptor/ 

Certain economists had given some slight perfunctory 
attention to the vital services of goods that were sold, 
by tracing the influence of their consumption upon 
labour-power, deploring the consumption of luxuries 
by labourers and so forth ; but such criticism formed 
no integral part of economic theory. Mr. Ruskin's 
adoption of vital use as the standard and measure of 
value must therefore be regarded as the most revolu- 
tionary of his positions. v It may be summed up in his 
eloquent but strictly scientific formula : " There is no 
wealth but LiFE.j Life, including all its powers of 
love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the 
richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble 
and happy human beings; that man is richest who, 
having perfected the functions of his own life to the 
utmost, has also the widest influence, both personal 
and by means of his possessions, over the lives of 
others." 1 

1 Unto this Last, p. 156. 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 91 

§ 13. It is not enough to recognise that Mr. Ruskin 
has substituted for the objective commercial standard of 
money a subjective human standard. Though econo- 
mists are primarily interested in exchange-value, there 
is a growing tendency among recent thinkers to insist 
upon subjective utility as the ground of exchange-value ; 
but the acceptance of this view by Jevons and his fol- 
lowers does not make them any nearer to Mr. Ruskin's 
theory, for none of the economists goes behind the pres- 
ent actual desires of men as reflected in their industrial 
conduct. Political Economy, as they conceive it, deals 
with what is, not with what ought to be. As a science 
it is concerned with what men actually do and want, as 
an art with the economical ordering of their doings for 
the satisfaction of these actual wants. 

Now Mr. Ruskin deliberately lays down an ethical 
standard of conduct for the art of Political Economy, 
the acceptance of which entirely alters the nature of the 
science. ( The true " value " of a thing is neither the 
price paid for it nor the amount of present satisfaction 
it yields to the consumer, but the intrinsic service it 
is capable of yielding by its right use) Of commercial 
goods, or any other class of goods, those which have 
a capacity of satisfying wholesome human wants are 
" wealth," those which pander to some base or injurious 
desire of man are not wealth, but " illth," availing, as 
they do, not for life but for death. (Thus he posits 
as the starting-point of Political Economy a standard 
of life not based upon present subjective valuations of 
" consumers," but upon eternal and immutable principles 
of health and disease, justice and injustice^) A man or 
a nation is wealthy in proportion as he or it is enabled 



92 JOHN BUSKIN. 

to satisfy those needs of nature which are healthy, and 
thus to realise true capacities of manhood. The mer- 
cantile economist says he is a practical man concerned 
with what is, not with what ought to be. Mr. Ruskin 
as political economist insists that " what ought to be" is 
a practical standard of conduct for the consistent science 
of Political Economy : the " ought " which lies outside 
the narrow utilitarianism of the mercantile economist 
falls within the range of broader human economics, and 
becomes the most important " is." 

§ 14. The third great reform in Mr. Ruskin's method 
has reference to the term " Political." Although the 
first great English treatise upon Political Economy bore 
the title " Wealth of Nations," the science in the hands 
of Adam Smith's successors had never taken a true 
" social " or " national " standard even for the computa- 
tion of commercial wealth. The laissez faire assumption 
that each individual, in seeking to get most for himself, 
must take that course by which he would contribute 
most to the general well-being, implied a complete fail- 
ure to comprehend the organic structure of society. A 
nation was conceived of as a mere aggregate of its con- 
stituent members ; the good of the whole as the added 
good of all the separate parts. The current " Political 
Economy" did indeed recognise the utility of private 
co-operation of groups of individuals within a nation for 
the production of wealth, but the incentive to such 
co-operation was not the production of wealth for the 
nation but of profits and wages for the separate co-oper- 
ating members. 

The conviction that the greed of individuals and 
groups of individuals within a nation would induce 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 93 

I them to such industry as would yield a larger total 
aggregate of material forms of wealth than could be 
\ obtained by a direct national ordering of industry, 
1 might cr might not be reasonable, but an economy 
in which the good of the " polis " is neither the con- 
' scious good nor the directing influence could scarcely 
I deserve the name political. The fact was that the 
; economy of Ricardo and Mill was never " political " 
in any proper sense ; its economic laws were merely 
! generalisations of the discreet action of individual busi- 
ness men in their buying and selling processes ; it was 
I simply the economy of the shrewd Lancashire mill- 
! manager "writ large" and called political. Because 
it was a profitable thing for the mill-manager to buy 
his raw material, his machinery and labour, in the 
cheapest market, to order his mill by the most thorough 
subdivision of labour, to get the largest possible output 
from his iron or his human mechanisms, to produce not 
the best goods but those which would sell so as to yield 
the larger margin, to get for himself a market by oust- 
ing his competitors ; because it was good business for 
any manufacturers to pursue this course of conduct, 
it was good for all manufacturers to do so, and for the 
nation of manufacturers and shopkeepers as an aggre- 
gate. Even the Free Trade policy, in which the old 
economists came nearest to a conscious realisation of 
National Economy, was seldom presented in a national 
form, and was more generally proved and illustrated 
by the advantages accruing to individuals or special 
interests within the nation by untrammelled intercourse 
with individuals and trades in other nations. 

The conception of a really " Political Economy," to 



94 JOHN BUSKIN. 

which Jevons once rose in a single rhetorical flight when 
he said that " the great problem of economy may, as it 
seems to me, be stated thus : ' Given a certain population 
with various needs and powers of production, in posses- 
sion of certain lands and other sources of material : 
required the mode of employing their labour so as to 
maximise the utility of the produce,' " 2 found no place in 
the authoritative text-books, not even in those of Jevons 
himself. 

Now Mr. Ruskin, though he did not philosophise upon 
the " organic " nature of the State, did always insist 
upon imputing to it that nature, premising that both the 
science and the art of Political Economy should be con- 
structed from the standpoint of the well-being of the 
whole society. The state with which his " economy " is 
concerned is not merely an industrial and a political, 
but, in accordance with his view of life and art, distinc- 
tively a moral organism : justice is the life of his state 
as it was the life of Plato's. This organic conception 
everywhere illuminates his theory and his practical con- 
structive policy ; it gives order to his conception of the 
different industrial classes and to the relations of individ- 
ual members of each class ; it releases him from the me- 
chanical atomic notion of equality, and compels him to 
develop an orderly system of interdependence sustained j 
by authority and obedience, and in the radical problem of 
distribution it drives him to have recourse to the analogy 
of the human body which is the type of organic life. 
" The circulation of wealth in a nation resembles that 
of blood in the natural body. The analogy will hold 
down to minute particulars. For as diseased local deter- 
1 Theory of Political Economy, p. 289 (2d ed.). 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 95 

mination of the blood involves depression of the general 
health of the system, all morbid local action of riches 
will be found ultimately to involve a weakening of the 
resources of the body politic. ,, 2 Other sociologists, with 
more parade of scientific terminology, e. g. Herbert 
Spencer in England and Schaffle in Austria, have devel- 
oped this industrial physiology, but the full worth of the 
analogy still waits recognition alike in its bearing upon 
the theory of production and of distribution of wealth. 

This organic conception of industry is essential in 
order to justify the epithet " political," and the fact that 
it was wanting in the inductive science of the mercantile 
economists dominated by an individualist philosophy, is 
a fatal defect. 

§ 15. We can now sum up Mr. Ruskin's radical 
reforms in the structure of Political Economy. 

Whereas the current theory took for its subject-matter 
material marketable goods and the processes of making 
and distributing them, measured in terms of money, and 
regarded from a distinctively individual standpoint, Mr. 
Ruskin's theory took for its subject-matter all kinds of 
" goods," including those highest goods which are im- 
material and unmarketable, and the processes of making 
and distributing them, measured in terms of " life " and 
regarded from a social standpoint. 

The work of Mr. Ruskin then consists in this, that he 
has " humanised " Political Economy. Every fact and 
every process is stripped of its materialistic or its mone- 
tary garb and shown in its naked truth as " vitality." 
The " essence of wealth " consists neither in bank- 
balances nor in the lands, houses, goods they represent, 
1 Unto this Last, p. 49. 



96 JOHN BUSKIN. 

but in " authority over men." 1 Here is " sentimental- 
ism " with a vengeance ! Hood in his " Song of a Shirt " 
had declared, " It isn't linen you're wearin', it's human 
creatures' lives." Mr. Ruskin, by his powerful grasp of 
industrial physiology, proves that every « demand for 
commodities " is a demand for life or death, according 
as the work embodied in these commodities is good or 
evil in its nature and in the conditions under which it is 
performed. " Value," according to the professional 
economists, is not a property which anything possesses, 
a thing has no " value " inherent in it, the " value " 
depends upon the quantity of other things which it ex- 
changes for. Value, according to Mr. Ruskin, is the 
life-sustaining properties of anything, which are neither 
dependent upon other things nor upon the opinions which 
people form about it. " The thing is worth what it can 
do for you, not what you think it can." 2 Cost of Pro- 
duction, according to the text-books, was the quantity of 
money paid to get work done, or, in the more recent 
treatment, the amount of labour-power measured by 
time or some objective standard ; cost of production, 
according to Mr. Ruskin, is expenditure of life. The 
only standard of utility recognised by the orthodox 
theory is a monetary measure of desire. Mr. Ruskin's 
utility means promotion of life and happiness. By thus 
vitalising and moralising every term and every process, 
Mr. Ruskin forms the outline of a Political Economy 
which is primarily concerned with the production of 
healthy life, the manufacture of " souls of a good quality." 
§ 16. It is important to recognise the distinction be- 
tween the " vitalising" and the "moralising" processes 
1 Unto this Last, p. 63. 2 Queen of the Air, § 125. 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 97 

here imputed to Mr. Ruskin. The reduction of money- 
cost and money-measured utility to the pains of produc- 
tion and the pleasures of consumption, estimated in 
accordance with the actual desires and feelings of those 
who produce and consume, would be a vitalising process, 
marking a distinct advance in the humanisation of 
Political Economy. Such an analysis would doubtless 
condemn the false economy of our white-lead industry 
and other painful, pernicious, or toilsome work, by show- 
ing that the money-wages were no true measure of the 
cost in human suffering, as it would explode the bloated 
bubble of utility imputed to expensive luxuries. But to 
take the imperfect or distorted desires and tastes of 
existing workers and consumers as a final standard of 
valuation, is but a halfway house at which Mr. Ruskin 
never consents to tarry. Neither order nor progress is 
possible or conceivable without ideals; no science or 
art of wealth can be founded upon the short-sighted, mis- 
taken, and shifting desires of the moment ; the welfare 
of an individual or a nation implies a standard of true 
humanity to which the desires and caprices of the 
moment must be referred. For the false short-range 
expediency of passing pleasures and pains, must be sub- 
stituted a just and orderly conception of social well-being. 
Thus the practice of Political Economy demands an ideal 
alike of the individual and the social life : a just order- 
ing of life which will lead to happiness. 

Though Mr. Ruskin is stern in his denunciation of the 
doctrine of utility and the school of utilitarians, with 
their " greatest happiness of the greatest number," this 
repugnance is directed against the hedonism by which 
most of the utilitarian prophets delivered over the con- 



98 JOHN BUSKIN. 

duct of life to fleeting pleasures and pains, without pro- 
viding for the attainment of the conditions of abiding 
happiness. Indeed, Mr. Ruskin himself in his Political 
Economy, so far as his conception of the end is con- 
cerned, may not unaptly be classed as a utilitarian. For 
though the operating motives upon the individual man 
are to be the principles of Justice and Honesty, the re- 
sult is measured in terms of happiness. " The final 
outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the pro- 
ducing, as many as possible, full-breathed, bright-eyed, 
and happy-hearted human beings." 1 

In passing from Mercantile Economy to Mr. Ruskin's 
science and art of Social Economics, we do not abandon 
the self-seeking motives or the attainments of satisfaction 
as the goal ; we enlarge the scope and expand the nature 
of these conceptions by rationalising and moralising the 
" self " which is seeking satisfaction. The domination 
of Justice and Honesty within the soul enlarges and 
purifies the self by imposing sacrifices of the narrower | 
self in favour of a wider self which grows as we identify 
our good with that of others; it expands and orders our 
conception of happiness by imparting a broader and more 
complex character to our plan of life ; sensations which 
are "just, measured, and continuous" evolve a true 
standard of utility for the conduct of life. When Mr. 
Ruskin insists that "the essence of the misteaching of 
your day concerning wealth of any kind consists in the 
denial of intrinsic value," 2 he is denouncing the lack, 
of principle which underlies^ the so-called philosophy of 
utilitarianism in its refusal to furnish any satisfactory 
check upon short-range expediency of conduct. 

1 Unto this Last, p. 65. 2 Fors, Letter -xii. (i. 250). 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 99 

Now, to Mr. Ruskin these defects of Political Econ- 
omy, its materialism, its faith in competition and en- 
lightened selfishness, its monetary standard of value, 
were primarily moral defects, and his crusade against 
the current teaching was inspired by moral energy. 
It is this moral character which has led many to dis- 
count the value of his criticism as " sentimental." We 
have already seen that sentiments and the ideals which 
they imply are essential to any orderly interpretation of 
economic phenomena, and that in this sense Mr. Ruskin' s 
Political Economy is " scientific." 

§ 17. I have dwelt at some length upon Mr. Ruskin's 
criticism of the unscientific basis of current "Political 
Economy " because defenders of that study have often 
accused Mr. Ruskin of attacking not the " science " but 
an art which, they say, he has wrongly foisted upon 
them. This accusation derives a certain speciousness 
from the fact that his fiercest resentment is aimed against 
the practical support which he holds to be given by 
" economists " to the iniquity and inhumanity of com- 
petitive industry. But even here, it will be seen later 
on * his attack is in reality directed against certain dog- 
matic " principles " of the science, and not primarily 
against the art. 

The partition between science and art in Political 
Economy has always been peculiarly thin, and writers 
from Adam Smith onwards have been as much concerned 
with the application of their theories to free trade, taxa- 
tion, money, and the maintenance of individual bargain- 
ing, as with the construction of those theories. 

Mr. Ruskin did not, as is sometimes alleged, mistake 
1 Chapter V. 



100 JOHN TiUSKIN. 

the indicative for the imperative mood in the " econo- 
mists ; " the confusion was chiefly their own. It is true 
that in his proposals for a wider " Political Economy " 
he himself was more directly concerned with the art than 
with the science. But for all that it must not be sup- 
posed that he ignored the need of scientific basis. 
Doubtless the claim which he himself preferred was to 
have laid an ethical basis of the art of social life rather 
than a " scientific " basis. He would probably have re- 
pudiated " a science of ethics." But in the stress laid 
upon the basis of " economic " conduct, we may not 
ignore the testimony which modern sociology accords to 
the scientific nature of his work. 

Mr. Ruskin's statement of the end of " economic " 
activity as the production of " life," " souls of a good 
quality," furnishes the necessary hypothetical end or goal 
required to give meaning to Sociology as a science and 
to Social Progress as an art. The modern teaching of 
evolution, so far from dispensing with " final causes," is 
unintelligible, and falls into anarchy without them. 
However dimly conceived, the ordered movement of 
" evolution " requires the hypothetical goal just as it re- 
quires the hypothesis of efficient causes. Not only the 
practical reformer, but the student of social movements, 
must posit some such end as that which Mr. Ruskin 
sets before us in asserting the aim of Political Economy 
to be " the multiplication of human life at its highest 
standard." 1 

Sociology requires the scientific imagination to leap 
over the interstices of known phenomena in order to 
construct out of a medley of ill-assorted facts a scientific 
1 Munera Pulveris, § 7. 



CURRENT POLITICAL ECONOMY. 101 

law of change in conformity with some idea which has 
been imposed upon phenomena before it is illustrated by 
them and explains them ; as this scientific imagination 
transcends in its theory the phenomena of the past, so it 
produces the lines of progress discovered in the past, 
into the future, manufacturing ideals. This construction 
of ideals is an essential task of a truly scientific mind : 
all great discoveries come from such intellectual acts of 
faith. 

Biologists and sociologists, correlating the processes of 
organic life in conformity with preconceived and well- 
verified laws of progress, are everywhere engaged in 
giving intellectual form to a science and art of life such 
as Mr. Ruskin conceived and foreshadowed in his Politi- 
cal Economy. His conception of wealth is what sociology 
requires for its ideal ; his " value " is in substantial 
conformity to this same scientific purpose. Take the 
following testimony of a great living biologist : 

" Let us . . . leave the inmates of the academic 
cloister : walk out into the world, look about us, try to 
express loaf and diamond from the objective side in 
terms of actual fact, and we find that physical and 
physiological properties, or 'values,' can indeed indefi- 
nitely be assigned : the one as so much fuel, its heat-giv- 
ing power measurable in calorimeter, or in actual units of 
work, the other a definite sensory stimulus, varying ac- 
cording to Fechner's law. This is precisely what our 
author means in such a passage as the following, which, 
however absurd to the orthodox, is now intelligible enough 
to us: 

" Intrinsic value is the absolute power of anything to 
support life. A sheaf of wheat of given quantity and 



102 JOHN RUSKIN. 

weight has in it a measurable power of sustaining the 
substance of the body ; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed 
power of sustaining its warmth, and a cluster of flowers 
of given beauty, a fixed power of enlivening or animating 
the senses and heart." 1 

Our claim is not that Mr. Ruskin has formed a system 
of sociology, or that he has advanced far towards such 
a system, but that he has pointed the way to such a 
science, and has laid down certain hypotheses of fact 
and terminology such as are consistent with advances 
made independently by other scientific men. By insist- 
ing upon the reduction of all economic terms, such as 
value, cost, utility, etc., to terms of " vitality," by in- 
sisting upon the organic integrity and unity of all human 
activities, and the organic nature of the co-operation of 
the social units, and finally by furnishing a social ideal 
of reasonable humanity, Mr. Ruskin has amply justified 
his claim as a pioneer in the theory of Social Economics. 

1 " John Ruskin," by Patrick Geddes (Round Table Series), 
p. 26. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MR. RUSKIN'S THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 

§ 1. The literary method of social teaching. § 2. The problem 
of wealth stated in "Munera Pulveris" — A partial analysis. 
§ 3. Intrinsic value the essence of wealth. § 4. The capacity 
of the user as a condition of wealth. § 5. Distribution as a 
determinant of wealth. § 6. A corresponding analysis of 
u cost" required. §7. Incompleteness of formal analysis in 
Mr. Kuskin's theory. § 8. Kelations of industrial to non- 
industrial wealth not treated. § 9. Defective grasp of social 
evolution. § 10. Huxley's false distinction of "cosmic" and 
" ethical" — A statical conception of society. § 11. Summary 
of Mr. Ruskin's contribution to Social Economics. 

§ 1. It is not unnatural that the term " criticism " 
should have acquired a censorious or condemnatory 
meaning which does not rightly belong to it ; for a judge 
may often with propriety leave the virtues of a man or 
a thing to stand upon their own patent merits, and 
devote his time and attention chiefly to exposure of 
faults, which, either by escaping notice for what they 
are, or by some semblance of goodness or utility, may 
remain as hidden dangers. Such criticism will always 
be a special function of reformers ; but it is only a short- 
sighted and partial view of their work of criticism which 
will regard it as negative and destructive merely : all 
criticism in the hands of such men will be reformatory 
in purpose, the distinctively critical work only serving 



104 JOHN BUSKIN. 

as the foundation of constructive work, which will pro- 
ceed continuously from it. 

It is in this sense that Mr. Ruskin ever ranks as 
critic ; there is in him nothing of the intellectual 
" wrecker ; " his analytic faculty directed against the 
faults of a bad system of art, education, or social order 
is always charged with the spirit of repair, which is 
eager to exert itself in imposing order upon chaos, 
supplanting noxious weeds by wholesome fruit-bearing 
plants, and preparing the barren ground for useful 
cultivation. 

In approaching the social doctrine of Mr. Ruskin, it 
has been convenient to regard him as the assailant of 
current economic thought, partly because this rightly 
represents the historical evolution of his social work, 
and partly because this hostile attitude towards current 
teaching marks with dramatic emphasis his positive contri- 
bution towards the right handling of the social problem. 

We find this destructive and constructive work almost 
inextricably interwoven in the fabric of nearly all his 
books, and the form thus imposed upon his thinking has 
often proved a stumbling-block to the full comprehension 
and acceptance of his teaching. 

But this is only part of the larger character of super- 
ficial disorder which prevails in most of his writings, 
and which nothing but a sympathetic appreciation of the 
free laws which govern " the literature of power " is 
able to unravel. In order to understand the method of 
a thinker, we must understand his purpose. 

The sound and consistent structure of Mr. Ruskin's 
social theory has seldom gained full recognition, because 
it is nowhere presented in that continuous systematic 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 105 

form of statement which is commonly adopted by 
teachers who address the intellect. He never addresses 
the intellect alone ; in his writing there always lurks a 
double appeal : he ever seeks to touch the heart as well 
as to convince the understanding. The system which 
underlies this process is thus one of literary rather than 
of logical order, and the blending of passion with argu- 
ment, which it involves, is apt to cause confusion and 
distrust in those who like to have their reasoning dry. 
Moreover, this literary mode of exposition, proper 
though it was for Mr. Ruskin, often beguiled him into 
the opposed errors of discursiveness and excessive con- 
densation. 

§ 2. In no one of his books do we find a full, clear, 
and consistent statement of his social principles. " Unto 
this Last," " Munera Pulveris," and " Fors Clavigera," 
each and all profess such utterance ; large and just 
principles of exposition are laid down, but the per- 
formance, noble though it be, is nowhere a complete 
fulfilment of the initial promise. Not merely must his 
full teaching be gathered from many quarters in order 
to yield a consistent body of doctrine, but even then we 
shall find considerable lacunae in the application of the 
basic principles. 

The most systematic of his books, " Munera Pulveris," 
serves to illustrate this statement. At the opening we 
find a full definition of the scope of his work. " The 
essential work of the political economist is to determine 
what are in reality useful or life-giving things, and by 
what degrees and kinds of labour they are attainable and 
distributable." a 

1 Munera Pulveris, § xi. 



106 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Now here is laid down with admirable succinctness 
the fundamental antithesis between the cost or labour 
which goes into making " goods," and the utility or 
enjoyment to be got out of them. A right consideration 
of Industry from the human or social standpoint requires 
that the goods considered as " wealth " shall be resolved 
into these costs and utilities, and shall be estimated with 
equal reference to both. One of the gravest accusations 
which lies against the commercial economists is that 
they look too exclusively to the products and not suffi- 
ciently to the processes of production, rating the pros- 
perity of a people by the sum of its material goods, 
without considering how far this gain is offset by in- 
creased duration, intensity, monotony, and unwholesome- 
ness of work. In his broad declaration, "There is no 
wealth but life," as in his unceasing stress upon the 
need of good work for all men, Mr. Ruskin has laid 
down as the foundation-stone of social theory the organic 
relation between work and life, between production and 
consumption. It was therefore to be expected that in 
" Munera Pulveris " " wealth " would be resolved into 
both its human constituents, human cost receiving the 
same attention as human utility, and that the laws of 
the natural and moral interaction between work and life 
would be expounded. A logical analysis of Ruskinian 
wealth would take the concrete forms which constituted 
" commercial wealth," and, after ascertaining how much 
cost of painful or injurious effort went with the making 
of each of them, how much vital use would be got 
out of each of them by the consumer into whose hands 
it passed by distribution, would rate the true " wealth " 
embodied in these forms by the surplus of utility over 



m 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 107 

cost. Such analysis is suggested, but is only partially 
applied in " Munera Pulveris." The defective treatment 
is due to an acceptance of a narrower meaning of wealth, 
which, by making it consist in " things in themselves 
valuable," eliminates direct regard for labor-cost, and 
throws an undue stress upon utility. 

He opens with a clear and logical distinction between 
value and cost. " Value is the life-giving power of any- 
thing; cost the quantity of labor required to produce 
it;" 1 but instead of rating the "wealth" contained in 
goods equally by the lowness of their cost and the 
height of their value, he looks to the latter only for his 
standard measure. This gives a one-sided character to 
his analysis — the value or " utility " side is worked out 
with admirable skill, but the " cost " side is slighted, 
while the organic relation between the two is left out of 
sight. 

§ 3. In order to reduce a stock of commercial " utili- 
ties," with which Mercantile Economy concerns itself, 
to the real " utility " or human satisfaction which alone 
" Political Economy " regards, three tests must be applied, 
three questions answered. 

(1) What is the nature of the goods and services 
which rank as " utilities ? " 

Mercantile Economy pays no regard to the inherent 
qualities of goods, whether they are well made or ill 
made, pure or adulterated ; or to the kind of desires 
they serve to satisfy, whether they are wholesome or 
morbid, moral or immoral. Utility is only seen reflected 
through demand. A demand for bad books or shoddy 
clothing which prompts X100,000 of purchases is just 
1 Munera Pulveris, § xii. 



108 JOHN BUSKIN. 

as good as a demand which offers the same sum for 
wholesome bread or noble works of art. 

Now, to Mr. Ruskin the prime test of value is the 
" essential utility " of the goods, their capacity to satisfy 
a good human want. According to the excellence of 
use embodied in a thing will it rank as valuable. Things , 
which make for life in their consumption are " wealth ; " 
things which, being essentially noxious, make for death, 
are " illth." 

In the preface of " Munera Pulveris " Mr. Ruskin illus- 
trates this distinction in the realm of art by comparing 
certain pictures of Tintoret, which were left to rotten- 
ness and ruin in Venice after the Austrian siege, with 
the " elaborately finished and coloured lithographs rep- 
resenting the modern dances of delight " which were 
selling freely in the streets of Paris. 

" The labour employed on the stone of one of those 
lithographs is very much more than Tintoret was in the 
habit of giving to a picture of average size. Consider- 
ing labour as the origin of value, therefore, the stone so 
highly wrought would be of greater value than the pic- 
ture ; and since also it is capable of producing a large 
number of immediately saleable or exchangeable impres- 
sions, for which the demand is constant, the city of Paris 
naturally supposed itself, and in all hitherto believed or 
stated principles of Political Economy was, infinitely 
richer in the possession of a large number of these lith- 
ographic stones . . . than Venice in the possession of j 
those rags of mildewed canvas flaunting in the south t 
wind and its salt rain. . . . Yet all the while, Paris was 
not the richer for these possessions. Intrinsically the 
delightful lithographs were not wealth, but polar contra- ' 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 109 

ries of wealth. She was, by the exact quantity of la- 
bour she had given to produce these, sunk below, instead 
of above, absolute Poverty. They not only were false 
Riches, they were true Debt, which had to be paid at 
last — and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli shows 
in what manner." 1 

§ 4. (2) " Intrinsic value " is the first qualification of 
wealth. But it must be supplemented by " acceptant 
capacity," i. e. the ability of the consumer to get out of 
the " utility " the good it contains. " A horse is no 
wealth to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we can- 
not see, nor can any noble thing be wealth except to a 
noble person. As the aptness of the user increases, the 
effectual value of the thing used increases; and in its 
entirety can coexist only with perfect skill of use and fit- 
ness of nature." 2 It is this thought which links Mr. 
Ruskin's Art of Education to his Political Economy, and 
furnishes one more condemnation of the commercial 
measurement of wealth by quantity of material forms. 
It has only just begun to dawn upon the minds of 
our most enlightened political economists that the 
prosperity of a country can be enhanced as much 
by educating the consumer as by improving the arts 
of the producer. The character-test is enforced in a 
passage of " Unto this Last," where some persons are 
denounced as " inherently and eternally incapable of 
wealth." 

§ 5. (3) A third test of " wealth," not explicitly ap- 
plied 3 by Mr. Ruskin, follows as corollary from the 

1 Preface, p. xi. Written in 1871, after the siege of Paris. 

2 Munera Pulveris, § 14. 

* Though implied in " Munera Pulveris," §§ 56, 57. 



110 JOHN BUSKIN. 

requirement of " capacity." The amount of utility got 
out of anything will depend, not only upon its intrinsic 
quality and the nature of the person who possesses it, 
but also upon the quantity of it which he possesses. 
A loaf has intrinsic value ; it has effectual value to a 
worthy man, but only in so far as he has not already 
sufficient bread. In other words, the greatest effectual 
utility is got from any article when it goes to satisfy the 
intensest human need. We must look, therefore, not 
only to the nature of the thing and the nature of the 
consumer in order to know the " wealth " that attaches 
to any goods, but also to their distribution. A given 
quantity of commercial goods will attain their maximum 
value according as they are distributed so as to satisfy 
the greatest needs. 

If, therefore, a commercial economist shows us 
<£ 1,000 worth of goods, before we can obtain from 
him any knowledge of their true value, we must ask 

(1) What good human purposes can they serve ? 

(2) What kind of persons will get them ? 

(3) How much will each of these persons get ? 

§ 6. This analysis of commercial into human utility 
is sound and complete. But Mr. Ruskin's " science " 
demands that a precisely analogous process be applied 
to the " cost " side of the problem. The doctrine of 
intrinsic value must be applied to " cost." As utility is 
measured in terms of life, so cost must be measured in 
terms of death. This is affirmed on page 58 in general 
terms, but the full and lucid analysis of utility is 
balanced by no corresponding analysis of cost in 
" Munera Pulveris." For the economics of work we 
must turn to an earlier book, " The Political Economy 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. Ill 

of Art," l and even there we do not find any orderly 
treatment of the whole scope of human work, but only 
a just consideration of the work side of the problem in 
art-production. 

In order to make the analysis of Labour (Cost) 
correspond with the analysis of Utility or Value, we 
must investigate 

(1) The intrinsic nature of the work in relation to 
the worker. Some work is essentially degrading by its 
physical conditions, e. g. that of the iron-puddler or the 
stoker on board ship. Other work is fraught with dan- 
ger to health or moral character so grave that only igno- 
rance or penury could induce workers to undertake it. 
To this class belong some processes in the manufacture 
of white lead, phosphorus matches or chemicals, some 
work in public-houses or other places of entertainment. 
JThe " cost " of such work is incalculably large : set off 
*against utility by a human standard, it can never " pay ; " 
it must always involve a net loss of human life. 

Labour that is toilsome, monotonous, carried on amid 
ugly and noxious surroundings, uninteresting and unedu- 
cative, involves " cost." Labour which is wholesome 
physical or mental exercise, pursued in moderation, in- 
volving skill and the expression of individuality, educa- 
tive of capacity and character, is not really labour, 2 for 
it involves no loss of life. It is in reality a source of 
wealth as great as the consumption of utilities, and Mr. 
Ruskin's full theory requires that it be so reckoned. 
The term " intrinsic cost " is required to balance " in- 
trinsic value." 

1 Afterwards published as " A Joy for Ever." 

2 Labour = lapse = loss (of life), § 59. 



112 JOHN BUSKIN. 

(2) This doctrine of "intrinsic cost" requires to be 
supplemented by consideration of the capacities of the 
workers. Their industrial nature, strength, skill, etc., 
must be known if we would discover the true or " effec- 
tual" cost. A given quantity of a certain labour im- 
posed upon trained and strong men during a normal 
working day may involve slight " cost ; " imposed upon 
weaker women or children, its cost may be enormous in 
human injury and suffering. Race, sex, age, natural 
ability, education, and training are all leading factors in 
determining subjective " cost." Where labour which 
might fall lightly upon adult shoulders is imposed upon 
the unripened strength of "half-timers" the "cost" 
both to individual and society is incalculably great, 
though commercially it is " cheap labour," because 
the money paid for it is small. We must know who 
supplies the labour before we can tell the cost. 

(3) Finally, in estimating the cost as we estimate 
the utility of a quantity of goods, we require to know 
how the labour is distributed, — whether it is spread in 
reasonably short periods of moderate intensity over a 
large number of workers, or is inflicted in heavy and 
protracted toil upon a small number driven to put out 
an excessive exertion, or involves seasons of overtime 
alternating with seasons of idleness. The lightest and 
most interesting work becomes a painful and injurious 
toil if it is continued too long, while the most strenuous 
physical or mental effort may be light and wholesome if 
undertaken in small pieces. Thus any given quantity of 
labour-time in mining, type-setting, machine-tending, etc., 
may vary infinitely in the amount of the vital " cost " it 
involves, according as it is distributed. 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 113 

§ 7. To all these considerations of cost Mr. Ruskin 
was fully alive ; not one fails to find eloquent expression 
and illustration in his works. But neither in " Munera 
Pulveris " nor elsewhere has he gathered them together 
so as to confront them with his analysis of value or 
utility. This lack of systematic setting has injured his 
reputation as economic thinker. Had he placed side by 
side his analysis of human cost and human utility, show- 
ing, as indeed he has shown in many incidental passages, 
the just and natural relation between cost and utility ; 
how the quantity and quality of consumption react upon 
the volume and character of work ; how good conditions 
of skilled and interesting work form an education of the 
consumer and the citizen, reacting in their turn upon 
demand ; how the effort of one class to consume without 
producing obliges another class to produce without con- 
suming ; how such violations of physical and moral law 
are fraught with double injury alike to those who over- 
work and those who overfeed, — had Mr. Ruskin in 
" Munera Pulveris " or elsewhere plainly and orderly 
set forth these principles of the subjective political 
economy, their strictly scientific character could not 
have evaded recognition. 

By neglecting formally to complete his statement of 
principles, by scattering his theory amid passages of pas- 
sionate appeal, whimsical flights of philology, vigorous 
tirades againt materialism and utilitarianism, Mr. Ruskin 
has hidden the really consistent ground-plan of his eco- 
nomic teaching so that it is difficult to discover and 
apprehend as a perfect whole. 

§ 8. Other elements of incompleteness in Mr. Ruskin's 
social theory require notice. One of his radical reforms 



114 JOHN RUSKIN. 

in the structure of Political Economy, we have already 
seen, consisted in breaking down the barrier between 
marketable and non-marketable goods. By identifying 
wealth with life he has expanded the science and art of 
wealth so as to include human activities which lie out- 
side the industrial arts, not merely humanising the char- 
acter, but expanding the area of political economy. This 
being so, we should naturally expect that considerable 
attention would be devoted to the principles governing 
the just relation between industrial and non-industrial 
wealth and the human faculties respectively employed in 
producing and consuming each. The science of efforts 
and satisfactions, which Mr. Ruskin's analysis is always 
reaching after, requires elaborate search into the organic 
relations subsisting between the different kinds of effort 
and satisfaction, in order that a rational standard of good 
life may be established which shall economise most per- 
fectly the powers of individual life, and so harmonise 
them in the play of social life as to secure a true 
"political economy." 

This work is implied in and flows from Mr. Ruskin's 
fundamental principles, but nowhere has he attempted 
even to mark its outlines in social theory, though, in the 
actual experiments of social reform which he planned in 
later life, he contributes many wise suggestions regarding 
the distribution of human activity in different forms of 
work and enjoyment. 

§ 9. One other strongly marked feature of his intel- 
lectual character has impaired the productivity of his 
social teaching. Either because his intellectual prin- 
ciples were firmly set before Darwin, Wallace, and ^ 
Spencer had firmly impressed upon their age the lead- 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 115 

ing ideas of evolution, or from a certain blend of scorn 
and apprehension with which he greeted the more ab- 
stract doctrines of the natural sciences, Mr. Ruskin's 
social views are defective in the sense of continuous 
development. 

His assertion of the eternity and immutability of 
value best exhibits this trait. " The value of a thing 
... is independent of opinion, and of quantity. Think 
what you will of it, gain how much you may of it, the 
value of the thing itself is neither greater nor less. For 
ever it avails, or avails not ; no estimate can ruin, no 
disdain repress, the power which it holds from the Maker 
I of things and of men." 1 

Now here Mr. Buskin comes very near to reviving 
one of the mediaeval superstitions about " substance " 
as an " entity." The value of a thing, what it avails 
for life, may, as we have seen, be independent of opinion, 
in the sense that a drunkard's high valuation of " gin " 
does not raise its essential value. But the value of a 
thing must vary with its quantity ; the value of a glut 
of corn can at best be a potential not an actual value ; 
where there is no hunger to satisfy, it cannot avail for 
life. A still more radical objection underlies his asser- 
tion of the immanence of value in " utilities " independ- 
ently of the estimate of consumers. In discussing 
" acceptant capacity " in " Munera Pulveris," Mr. Buskin 
allowed that there would be no value in a horse for one 
who could not ride. Now this admission indicates that 
in his theory he takes man as he is, counting wealth 
what is good for actual man, " illth " what is bad for 
him. With this criterion we must insist that the effi- 
1 Unto this Last, p. 118 ; of. Munera Pulveris, §§ 32-34. 



116 JOHN BUSKIN. 

cient value of anything may vary infinitely according 
to the stage of development an individual or a society 
has reached. A picture of Tintoret, an opera of Wagner, 
would have no value whatever if presented to a savage 
people, for though the intrinsic nature of these goods 
was not affected, their actual power to raise life would 
be absent. Indeed the very essence of culture in an 
individual, civilisation in a nation, consists in a rising to 
new levels, at which goods, which were valueless before, 
ripen into value, while the valuation of all other goods 
is altered. This conception of an orderly and natural 
development of a standard of consumption is a corner- 
stone of " human economics." Progress largely consists 
in giving value to new objects and in the adjustment of 
old values which enter into a " standard of life." To 
conceive value as some power immanent in a thing 
and unchangeable in quantity, implies the adoption of 
a stereotyped ideal of society, and, more than this, it 
implies a conception of a homogeneous humanity which 
is not even ideally true. Mr. Ruskin was possibly misled 
by the " specific ideals " of his early art theory into sup- 
posing that there was one specific ideal of society in- 
dependent of race, place, age, and all other conditions. 
" Modification of organism by environment," attended 
by " reaction of organism upon environment," are 
phrases which would have awakened Mr. Ruskin's ire, 
but for all that they express important truths required 
to complete the principles of Social Economics which 
he avowed. Had Mr. Ruskin been less scornful or sus- 
picious of the rising science of biology, he might have 
greatly strengthened the ethical supports on which he 
relied by evidences from that source. For in tracing 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 117 

the laws of the physical life of animal organisms, and 
those of the life of societies, analogy has long since been 
resolved into identity, and an ever-increasing number of 
biologists are willing to carry biology into sociology, and 
to recognise that " the economic problem of the mainte- 
nance of man is but one special case of the vast problem 
of the modification of organism by environment, exactly 
as the descent of man is a special case of the origin of 
species." 1 

The law of just distribution of wealth, to Mr. Ruskin 
primarily a moral problem, is seen to rest upon a neces- 
sary physical basis, so soon as we learn to trace through 
all the changing processes of vegetable and animal life 
the natural interdependence and interaction between 
nutrition and function, the intake of food and the out- 
put of energy in work. Once let us grasp comprehen- 
sively the truth that society is rightly classed as an 
organism, and the great principle of apportionment 
of work and its products contained in the formula, 
{ " From each according to his powers, to each according 
!to his needs," no longer rests only on a sentimental or a 
purely moral basis ; it becomes the necessary application 
of a natural law of progress in every department of 
organic life. 

§ 10. There are indeed those who suggest that the 
cosmic laws applicable to all lower forms of life, and to 
man as an animal, are overruled or even reversed by 
new laws governing the rational conduct of man in 
society. Thus Huxley, for example, has endeavoured 
to contrast social with cosmic development, urging that 

1 Proceedings of the Koyal Society, Edinburgh, 1884 (quoted, 
Geddes, " John Kuskin," p. 33). 



118 JOHN BUSKIN. 

" social progress means a checking of the cosmic proc- 
ess at every step, and the substitution of it for another, 
which may be called the ethical process, the end of 
which is not the survival of those who may happen to 
be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions 
that exist, but of those who are ethically the fittest." 1 
The loose logic of this distinction resides in the words 
" in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist ; " 
for among these conditions ethical fitness must rank ; 
and if this is found to be the chief determinant of sur- 
vival, it can only hold this position by successfully com- 
peting with other non-ethical conditions, and if it prove 
the stronger, the test it imposes is evidently a truer 
representative of " the whole of the conditions " than 
another test of individual fitness which ex hypothesi is 
weaker. In point of fact, Huxley's distinction contains 
the negation of all continuity of development; if his 
contrast of ethical and cosmic were valid, it implies, 
first, a sundering of human society from other animal 
societies, and, secondly, the conception of ethical 
motives entering suddenly into the history of man so 
as to reverse the earlier modes of human action. The 
conformity of the life of human societies to the laws 
which govern other infra-human societies, the identity 
of certain principles of healthy growth in social organ- 
isms with those of individual organisms, does not dera- 
tionalise or in any way degrade the former. On the 
contrary, this identity and continuity of organic proc- 
esses, which, by continuous strengthening of social 
forces raise the struggle for life to a higher plane, in 
which the struggle of societies plays a more important 
1 Evolution and Ethics, p. 81. 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 119 

part, imposing a more social test of " fitness " upon the 
struggles of individuals, are essential for the realisation 
of rational order in the universe. The crude dualism 
which Huxley posits receives little support from 
thoughtful biologists, while ethical philosophers more 
and more incline to give a negative reply to the oft-put 
question, " Are God and Nature then at strife ? " 

Through his refusal to accept the teaching of evolu- 
tion in human life, Mr. Ruskin has been led to impart 
too statical a character to his " Political Economy," and 
too uniform a type to his ideal society. Sociology, in its 
conception of social progress, admits not one but many 
types of civilisation; political and industrial societies 
must take many different paths of progress moving 
towards, sometimes consciously realising, widely differ- 
ent ideals. There can be no single abiding, universal 
form of political or industrial society ; wealth, value, 
and all terms expressive of utility to man must shift 
according to the changing needs and capacities of 
man. 

Mr. Ruskin did not, of course, explicitly deny this 
necessity of continuous progress. But his criticism 
shows him possessed too strongly by the conviction that 
the injustice, waste, ugliness, and other evils of society 
were maladies which, properly treated, would restore 
society to a primitive natural state of health. Curative 
measures were needed to overcome the maladies, a good 
regimen to preserve the restored health. Social health 
presented itself to him rather as an accomplished order 
than as a means of progress. His own strong love of 
order, and his unusually dogmatic temperament, led 
him to conceive social reform as a work of restoration, 



120 JOHN RUSKIN. 

a realisation of definite principles of social good in a 
pattern commonwealth, where peace and contentment 
would prevail, and when stable and rational authority 
would be subject to no disturbing influence. 

But this disorder and uncertainty in the teaching of 
social principles, this undue stress upon the absoluteness 
and the permanence of his ideals, must not be allowed 
to blind us to the fundamental excellence of Mr. Ruskin's 
Political Economy. 

He has laid a solid foundation of social economics 
as the science of the relation of efforts and satisfactions 
in a society. By insisting upon the reduction of money- 
measured "cost" and "utility" to subjective or human 
" cost " and " utility," he has taken a truly scientific and 
not, as commonly supposed, a sentimental position. It 
has been humorous to hear the dull drudges of commer- 
cial economics speaking contemptuously of an economist 
whose logic is far keener than their own, and whose 
work will hereafter be recognised as the first serious 
attempt in England to establish a scientific basis of 
economic study from the social standpoint. 

Upon this human basis the fuller economic theory of 
the future will be built. In America and upon the con- 
tinent of Europe not a few professional economists of 
note are engaged in working out the biological factors 
involved in the various forms of " cost " and " utility," 
so as to throw fuller light upon the economy of pro- 
duction and consumption. It is becoming more widely 
admitted that both the starting-point and the goal of 
economic activity is human life, and that all economic 
terms must be reduced to the standard not of money 
but of man. The art of Political Economy demands 



THEORY OF SOCIAL ECONOMICS. 121 

such enlargement and humanisation of the science as 
shall enable it to direct and govern social conduct. The 
admission of this claim does not imply, as is sometimes 
represented, the degradation of a science by making it 
subservient to practical utility. The visible failure of 
the orthodox Political Economy to throw light upon 
social or even distinctively industrial problems proves 
that a narrow group of phenomena has been falsely 
specialised, and that a standard of valuation has been 
taken which has sterilised the study. Mr. Ruskin's first 
claim as social reformer is that he reformed Political 
Economy. 



\ 
V 



CHAPTER V. 

FLAWS IN THE SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF MODERN 

INDUSTRY. 

§ 1. Detection of flaws in the structure of industrial science. 
§ 2. Growing acceptance of Mr. Kuskin's teaching of the 
economy of high wages. § 3. Over-specialisation as a malady 
of modern industry. § 4. The need of good work for all. § 5. 
Consumption the industrial goal — Detection of the fallacy of 
unlimited saving. § 6. "Demand for commodities not a de- 
mand for labour" refuted. §7. Currency based on intrinsic 
values — No credit. 

§ 1. In the last two chapters we have examined the 
vital differences in scope and nature between the Politi- 
cal Economy of Mr. Ruskin and the current Mercantile 
Economy. But Mr. Ruskin by no means confined him- 
self to a general repudiation of the claims of the latter. 
Much of his closest analysis and his choicest ridicule 
are devoted to exposing specific flaws in the structure of 
commercial science, which he further charges with offer- 
ing support to the immorality of business conducted for 
individual profit. Perhaps the most caustic summary 
of his position is contained in the following words: 
" While I admit there is such a thing as mercantile 
economy, distinguished from social, I have always said 
also that neither Mill, Fawcett, nor Bastiat knew the 
contemptible science they professed to teach." 1 

1 Note by Mr. Ruskin to " A Disciple of Plato," by Mr. William 
Smart. 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 123 

Such scornful language, applied to able and honest 
specialists, has done much to prevent Mr. Ruskin's argu- 
ments from receiving the attention they deserve. But 
the undue depreciation and the captious criticism in 
which he sometimes indulged must not deter us from 
recognising the acuteness of many of the points he 
presses. The inherent difficulties which arise in every 
department of social science from the complexity and 
shifting character of its phenomena, the few opportuni- 
ties of scientific experiment, the difficulties of securing 
just and reliable terminology, attach, as we have seen, 
in no ordinary measure to Commercial Economy ; while 
the conditions of its late and comparatively obscure 
growth have prevented it from receiving an adequate 
share of the attention of the keenest and most far- 
sighted intelligences of our century. The result has 
been a too facile establishment of dogmas enrolled in 
specious phraseology and sustained by the authority of 
a few able men who have been prematurely accredited 
as the builders of a complete science of industry, whereas 
they are only entitled to be regarded as pioneers groping 
in the obscure beginnings of a science. 

When a man with Mr. Ruskin's mental equipment 
approached the text-books of this commercial economy 
he could hardly fail to detect considerable flaws. The 
unconscious pressure of class interests and prejudices, 
flowing often through honest and efficient channels, is 
always operative in the intellectual world, framing hy- 
potheses, moulding theories, driving home conclusions 
to support the intellectual or material vested interests of 
the educated classes. This is not the judgment of a 
cynic. No one who faithfully follows out the progress 



124 JOHN RUSKIN. 

of any science, medicine, law, theology, philosophy, 
geology, politics, can fail to see the innumerable subtle 
ways in which the dry light of the intellect is humidised 
by passion and class interest. Just in proportion as 
the science is applicable for the guidance of an indi- 
vidual or a nation in matters where self-interest weighs 
heavily, is this injurious influence operative. In the 
selection and rejection of ideas and phrases, the forma- 
tion of theories, the admission and the valuation of 
different kinds of evidence, even in the basic processes 
of observation, bias creeps in. The study of industrial 
facts and laws among a people, passionately devoted to 
the pursuit of industrial gains, is subject to these falsi- 
fying forces in no ordinary measure. 

Free competition of individuals upon the basis of 
existing distribution of property was at once the passion 
and the intellectual conviction of the hard-headed men 
who, during the first half of this century, had in their 
hands the making of Commercial Economy. It was not, 
indeed, their conscious design to make a science which 
should yield an intellectual, or a moral, support to the 
existing industrial order; but any one who closely 
follows the growth of the study from Adam Smith to 
Jevons can see that it was in fact made to yield such 
support. Though much valuable work was done in 
the collection of industrial facts, and much acuteness 
was evinced in the deductive reasoning from economic 
principles, these principles themselves, the corner-stones 
of the scientific edifice, were often exceedingly defective 
both in substance and in wording, and each of these 
defects were serviceable for the maintenance of the 
industrial power of " the classes." Moreover, these 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 125 

defects lay thickest in those parts of economic theory 
which had particular relation to the distribution of 
wealth among the different sections of the industrial 
community. A full justification of this imputation is 
not here possible ; but its validity may be briefly 
evidenced by asking what has now become of the 
maxims, " Industry is limited by capital," " Labour 
receives advances from a wage-fund," " A demand for 
commodities is not a demand for labour," "Value 
depends upon cost of production," " Rent of land stands 
by itself as a surplus, not paid out of the product 
of labour, and forming no element in price." Is 
there any one of these central dogmas of the Political 
Economy of 1860, which commands the general alle- 
giance of modern teachers of commercial science ? 
Several of them, notably the wage-fund doctrine, and 
the cost theory of value, may be said to have almost 
disappeared, while the others, so far as they survive, 
present a strangely battered or transformed appearance. 

Now, though academic reformers of industrial sci- 
ence give small attention and less credit to John 
Ruskin, it is none the less true that his criticism in 
"Unto this Last," " Munera Pulveris," and " Fors 
Clavigera" furnishes, in several important instances, 
the first clear and effective refutation of the mortal 
errors of the above-named doctrines. 

§ 2. Let us take in order the leading heads of Mr. 
Ruskin's criticism. Commercial economists sought to 
sustain the credit of this system by representing the 
laws of this economy as " natural," and therefore " in- 
evitable" in their operation. This character was par- 
ticularly claimed for the Law of Supply and Demand 



126 JOHN BUSKIN. 

as a necessary determinant of wages. From the earliest 
beginning of " economic systems " the working classes 
and their sympathisers had been bluffed by the show 
of some such natural law. The bare subsistence wage 
of the French artisan was represented as natural by the 
Physiocrats, " II ne gagne que sa vie ; " Adam Smith 
saw forces which tended inevitably to keep the wages of 
common labour at a minimum ; his successors fortified 
their wage-fund theory by the cheerful doctrines of 
Malthus, teaching that " natural law " prevented wages 
from remaining above subsistence level, owing to the 
stimulus given by higher wages to an increase of the 
labouring population, which, by flooding the labour 
market, must speedily bring down any temporary rise. 
The wage-fund doctrine, whether supported by the Law 
of Population or not, represented wages as fixed in 
quantity at any given time by natural causes affecting 
the growth of capital, upon which no action of the 
workers themselves exercised any influence. Supported 
by a Law of Rent that professed to stand upon a basis 
of fixed physical conditions, and an equally rigid law of 
the tendency of profits to a minimum by the competi- 
tion of capital, the whole structure, especially upon its 
distribution side, laid bold claim to a " natural and 
necessary " character. Mr. Ruskin's general attack 
upon this claim was a double one. He asserted, and 
proved by an appeal to facts, that these laws obtained 
their natural and necessary appearance by false abstrac- 
tion. Taking wages in particular, he showed that they 
were not universally or even generally determined by 
the exclusive action of competition, but that custom, 
good feeling, and other considerations did actually enter 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 127 

in to determine rates of wages. Knowing that one 
chief object and result of this doctrine of necessary 
wages was to defend as socially advantageous the buy- 
ing of labour on the cheapest terms, he followed up 
his denial of the facts by an exposure of the false 
economy of cheap labour. Political economists sup- 
ported the payment of the lowest market wages by 
affirming that by this procedure the greatest average of 
work would be obtained from the servant, and therefore 
the fullest benefit to the community, and through the 
community to the servant himself. Mr. Ruskin replies, 
" That, however, is not so. It would be so if the servant 
were an engine, of which the motive-power were steam, 
magnetism, gravitation, or any other agent of calculable 
force. But he being, on the contrary, an engine whose 
motive-power is a Soul, the force of this very peculiar 
agent, as an unknown quantity, enters into all the 
political economist's equations without his knowledge, 
and falsifies every one of their results. The largest 
quantity of work will not be done by this curious engine 
for pay, or under pressure. It will be done only when 
the motive force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the 
creature is brought up to its greatest strength by its 
own proper fuel ; namely, by the affections." : This is 
not a sentimental, but a strictly business consideration. 
When Mr. Ruskin wrote these words, the notion of the 
Economy of High Wages was confined to a handful of 
Owenites, who were condemned by all sound, practical 
men as " cranks." There are now few teachers of 
Commercial Economy who either maintain that wages 
tend to rest at a subsistence level for any class of labour 
1 Unto this Last, p. 10. 



128 JOHN BUSKIN. 

by the operation of economic " laws," or who defend 
the utility of buying all labour for the lowest price at 
which it can be got. The experience of many en- 
lightened business men has made visible advance in 
the direction of Mr. Ruskin's teaching: a widespread 
conviction obtains, even in the business world, that a 
decent standard of subsistence is a necessary condition 
of efficient and reliable work, and that contentment and 
mutual good-will between employer and employed are 
the best security of business success. The countless 
experiments in " bonuses " and " progressive wages," in 
" profit-sharing " and " copartnership," attest the grow- 
ing recognition of " soul " as an agent in production. 
It is true that many of these experiments are motived 
by interested considerations, seeking to utilise content- 
ment and efficiency of labour in order to secure steadier 
and higher business profits. But none the less they 
appeal to motives entirely outside the ken of the earlier ; 
political economist, and subvert utterly the old reli- 
ance upon a competitive market price as the standard 
of " good business." But the most notable progress \ 
in this direction has been made by public bodies in 
the conduct of public business. State departments, 
municipal councils, boards of guardians, and other 
public authorities are not only learning the false 
economy of low wages, but are supporting their wiser 
policy by the very arguments of precedent and social 
theory which Mr. Ruskin presents in " Unto this Last " 
and " Fors." " We do not sell our prime-ministership 
by Dutch auction; nor on the decease of a bishop, 
whatever may be the general advantages of simony, 
do we (yet) offer his diocese to the clergyman who will 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 129 

take the episcopacy at the lowest contract. . . . The 
natural and right system respecting all labour is, that 
I it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman 
employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The 
false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the 
bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half 
price, and either take the place of the good, or force 
him by his competition to work for an inadequate 
sum 



" 1 



The social folly and the false economy of a town 
council paying its employees a rate of wages insufficient 
to evoke good social service, and to secure them and 
their families against the necessity of coming upon the 
poor rate or charitable funds, in old age or times of 
disablement, is so palpable as to require no serious 
argument. But for the private employer the net econ- 
omy of paying a " living wage " is sometimes less obvious. 
Where sound, skilled work is required, in order to pro- 
duce high qualities of goods, the enlightened self-interest 
of the employer may make for this policy ; but when a 
low efficiency suffices to make low-class goods which can 
command a profitable sale, self-interest of the profit- 
monger may defend the sweating wage. It is this fact 
that gives a fighting aspect to trade unionism. The 
common rule with its standard wage and standard-work- 
ing-day, which trade unionism seeks to force upon entire 
trades, is in strict accord with the principles laid down 
by " Unto this Last." As is shown by the classical 
authority upon the labour movement, 2 the true policy of 

1 Unto this Last, pp. 18, 21. 

2 " Industrial Democracy," by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, vol. 
ii., chap. xiii. 



180 JOHN BUSKIN. 



: 



trade unions is to carry down into the lower grades o 
labour the principles of remuneration and other condi 
tions of employment which, both in public and private 
work, have always been applied to the higher grades of 
officers and managers. Competition is not to disappear, 
but is merely to be shifted from price to quality of work ; 
it is to be applied, not so as to select the least efficient 
man at the lowest pay (for the more efficient man will 
be most likely to refuse the lowest pay), but the most 
efficient man at a rate of pay determined by some 
reasonable estimate of decent maintenance. Thus eco- 
nomic practice is gradually creeping after a saner ideal, 
in the payment of labour and the placing of contracts. 
Mr. Ruskin's condemnation of the economic teaching 
which gave theoretic sanction to the folly and the 
immorality of a false system of competition is sustained 
by an ever-widening circle of experience. 

§ 3. His criticism of the defence of unlimited division 
of labour by the teachers of industrial economy is not 
less trenchant or less salutary. Low cost of production, 
large quantity of goods, low prices for consumers, these 
are correctly attributed to increasing division of labour 
by commercial economists. Adam Smith builds his- 
theory of " The Wealth of Nations " upon the economy 
of the division of labour and its accompanying increase i 
of productivity, and the tests of low cost and low prices 
have seldom been seriously questioned. In modern Eng- 
lish economics the defence of Free Trade doctrine by : 
exclusive reference to the interests of consumers, and' 
the pivotal position assigned to utility in the theory of 
value, have prevented the claims of the producer from 
receiving due attention. It is not necessary to accept 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 131 

Mr. Ruskin's full theory of social economics to recognise 
the scientific inaccuracy of this position. Why should 
the utility of the consumer be more considered than the 
disutility (the cost) of the producer? If division of 
labour increases the real cost of the producer, this loss 
should not be ignored, but should be set against the 
alleged gain of the consumer. Now, Mr. Ruskin's 
indictment of excessive specialisation or division of 
labour is twofold : its injurious effect on the life 
and work of the producer is affirmed; the reality of 
the consumer's gain is denied. 

Commercial economy says that the " cost of produc- 
tion" is lowered by division of labour, but this only 
means that less wages are paid to labour for the smaller 
amount of energy put into the making of a given article : 
it takes no account of the quality of that energy. Now, 
the quality and interest of work is all-important to the 
worker ; anything which degrades that quality or de- 
stroys that interest imposes a " cost " upon the man 
which finds no register in the wages he is paid or the 
price of the article he makes. Mr. Ruskin insists that 
the effect of division of labour, especially under the reign 
of machinery, is to degrade the humanity of the worker 
by confining him to the performance of some single 
narrow routine task which calls for no exercise of his 
individual taste and skill, feeds no genuine interest, and 
educates only one activity, starving all the others in 
order to impart to this a purely mechanical accuracy 
and perfection. " It is not the labour that is divided, 
but the men — divided into mere segments of men, 
broken into small fragments and crumbs of life." " It 
is a sad account of a man to give of himself that he 



132 JOHN BUSKIN. 

has spent his life in opening a valve, and never made 
anything but the eighteenth part of a pin." Mr. Ruskin 
by no means stands alone in this indictment of modern 
industry. Emerson, Carlyle, Tolstoy, William Morris, 
and many others of our wisest teachers agree in regard- 
ing over-specialisation as one of the most destructive 
vices of our age and a chief source of modern discon- 
tent. The revolt of art against modern social condi- 
tions, the prominent part taken by artists in every 
revolutionary movement, are animated chiefly by the 
recognition that modern industrial economy is the 
enemy of good work. The product is severed from 
the process; the product is all-valued, the process is 
ignored. The distinctive conditions of industrial work 
are, first, narrowness, the confinement to a single set of 
actions ; second, monotony, the assimilation of the man- 
worker to a mechanism ; third, irrationality of labour, 
by dissociating the work of each worker from the 
conscious attainment of any complete end. 

The broader attitude adopted by Mr. Ruskin towards 
the use of machinery is reserved for fuller treatment. 
Here it must suffice to say that he is not an indiscrim- 
inate enemy of machinery. Nor does he oppose division 
of labour, involving, as it does, a certain wholesome 
sacrifice of all-round development of individual facul- 
ties for a social good, which again reacts beneficially 
upon the individual life by imposing service to a wider 
human end. It is the reckless, excessive, unconsidered 
sacrifice which degrades and brutalises workers by ab- 
sorbing all their time and energies in narrow routine 
work that he condemns. This is the charge against 
industry. Against the science of industrial economy he 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 133 

charges the direct defence and encouragement of this 
reckless policy, and an ill-balanced and short-sighted 
estimate of wealth, which measures it exclusively in 
terms of quantities of marketable goods. Adam Smith 
indeed, in one of his most eloquent passages, 1 admits the 
dangers of the policy upon which his theory of wealth 
is built, but few of his followers have ever raised their 
voices to repeat his caution. The notion that work is of 
necessity a disagreeable means to a desirable end, the 
attainment of commodities, is still firmly rooted in cur- 
rent economic theory, and the protests of literary or 
artistic meddlers has made little palpable impression. 
But social movements of to-day are more and more 
concerned with the " costs " imposed upon labour by 
division of labour, and with the risks incurred by sacri- 
ficing the well-being of producers to the supposed inter- 
ests of consumers. The greater part of our industrial 
legislation, our factory and employers' liability acts, the 
energies of the trade unions, and, in particular, the move- 
ments by legislative or private action to secure a short- 
ening of the working day, constitute a persistent and a 
growing public protest against the tyranny of the con- 
sumer practised in modern industry and defended by 
Political Economy. When economic theory has accepted 
a really scientific setting of value, and comes to recog- 
nise the exact equivalence of cost and utility in deter- 
mining value with the necessary reduction of cost and 
utility to terms of life, it will be once more forced to 
admit the fundamental sanity and importance of Mr. 
Ruskin's criticism. Meanwhile it lags far behind 
the policy which the labour movement and all keen- 
1 Wealth of Nations, Book V., chap, i., part iii., art. 2. 



134 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sighted social reformers are pressing upon civilised 
communities. 

§ 4. Mr. Ruskin's criticism carries him much further 
than mere protests against the injuries inflicted on the 
workers by excessive specialisation of work. The true 
wealth of nations requires that just as much attention 
be given to reducing the real cost of work, by enhancing 
its educative and health-giving character, as increasing 
the real utility of commodities. The wholesome and 
pleasurable life of man requires him to work and to 
work well. " To do as much as you can heartily and 
happily do each day in a well-determined direction, with 
a view to far-off results, with present enjoyment of 
one's work, is the only proper, the only essentially profi- 
table way." x Political Economy had always assumed 
that progress implied a diminution of the quantity of 
labour expended in producing anything ; to Mr. Rnskin 
it implies an improvement of the quality of labour 
expended. The two positions are not of course contra- 
dictory; Mr. Ruskin approves division of labour and 
machinery in so far as they reduce the quantity of 
painful, dangerous, or tedious toil, but an improvement 
of quality may be as serviceable as a diminution of 
quantity. To the commercial economist labour was 
a bad thing, and it (or at any rate its cost) was to be 
kept at a minimum; to Mr. Ruskin labour is a good 
thing, if done in moderation and under sound conditions. 
To raise the character of production is as important as 
to increase the quantity of consumption. Indeed, Mr. 
Ruskin goes further, in insisting that an increase of 
consumption purchased by a growing degradation of the 

1 Ruskiniana in Igdrasil ; cf. Fors, iii., Letters lxiv. and lxvii. 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 135 

quality of production is a net loss. Either the increased 
quantity of commodities is consumed by a class of 
drones living an idle, luxurious life in bold defiance 
of the natural and moral laws which bind work to 
enjoyment ; or, in so far as they are consumed by those 
who produce them, the degraded conditions of mechani- 
cal labour impair the wholesome capacity of enjoyment. 
It comes to this, that only good work can produce real 
utilities : excessive division of labour, in degrading the 
character of labour, degrades the quality of commodities, 
and a progress estimated quantitatively in increase of 
low-class material forms of wealth is not true progress. 
Reformed political economy will measure social progress 
just as much in terms of work as in terms of wealth : 
how to get for every man a proper quantity of good 
work will be just as important as how to get for him the 
proper quantity of consumption. All this is contained 
in Mr. Ruskin's attack upon the economic doctrine of 
division of labour. 

§ 5. These criticisms of the economic policy of buy- 
ing in the cheapest market and of the division of labour 
are primarily directed against industrial practice, and 
only secondarily against the current teaching of econom- 
ics which assumed and supported the validity of these 
practices. But some of Mr. Ruskin's keenest thrusts are 
directed at the technical doctrines of the current text- 
books. In this fight he is invariably bold and generally 
skilful, though not always successful. Perhaps one of 
his best services in this department is his convincing 
exposure of the fallacies of the teaching regarding capi- 
tal for which J. S. Mill in particular was responsible. 
The doctrine of the social utility of unlimited saving, the 



13G JOHN BUSKIN. 

assumptions that industry is limited by capital, and 
that demand for commodities is not demand for labour, 
are successfully exploded by Mr. Ruskin in various skil- 
ful analytic passages garnished with quaint illustrations. 
Mr. Ruskin rightly insisted that if any order was to be 
put into the current teaching it must definitely accept 
consumption as the economic goal. 1 The admission of 
consumption as the end implies a limitation of the 
quantity of capital which at any given time can service- 
ably function, and since capital proceeds from saving, 
the quantity of saving which is socially useful is deter- 
mined by the rate of consumption. The folly of unlim- 
ited parsimony is disclosed by humorous analogies from 
gardening, in which he points out the futile policy 
of postponing the production of the flower by an indefi- 
nite elongation of the stalk. 

The definition and the structure of commercial econ- 
omy point, in spite of occasional disclaimers, to the 
making of capital or productive goods as the end. Mr. 
Ruskin insists that capital is no end, that it is not con- 
sumption that has to justify itself by showing that it is 
" productive " (as the economic text-books with uncon- 
scious humour suggest), but capital, by showing that 
it produces something different from itself which can be 
and will be consumed. "It is a root which does not 
enter into vital function till it produces something else 
than a root, namely, fruit. That fruit will in time again 
produce roots ; and so all living capital issues in repro- 
duction of capital ; but capital which produces nothing 
but capital is only root producing root ; bulb issuing in 
bulb, never in tulip ; seed issuing in seed, never in 
1 Unto this Last, p. 150. 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 137 

bread. The Political Economy of Europe has hitherto 
devoted itself wholly to the multiplication, or (less even) 
the aggregation of bulbs. It never saw nor conceived 
such a thing as a tulip." 1 

This truth that capital is limited by consumption 
has made slow progress among English political econo- 
mists because of the intricate ambiguity of meaning 
attached to the term Capital, but among continental 
thinkers and in America the fallacy of unlimited saving 
is gaining ground. 2 That industry is limited by capital 
is shown to be just as true, and no more true, than that 
industry is limited by natural resources and by labour, 3 
for all three requisites are equally essential in their just 
proportions. 

§ 6. But in his treatment of this topic, Mr. Ruskin's 
chief service consists in his refutation of Mill's proposi- 
tion, " A demand for commodities is not a demand for 
labour." Those who are inclined to question his apti- 
tude for economic controversy may read with profit the 
second letter of vol. i. of " Fors," containing his concise 
and thoroughly effective exposure of the three separate 
fallacies contained in the argument by which Mill pre- 
tends to prove that a consumer of lace who stops his 
purchases of that commodity, and invests his savings in 
some other business, causes increased employment of 
labour. 4 The reluctance of our academic economists to 
abandon this dogma, so firmly rooted in " authority " 
and so serviceable a defence of unrestricted saving, is 

1 Unto this Last, p. 145. 

2 Cf. recent works of Professors Ely and Hadley. 

3 Munera Pulveris, § 50. 

4 The same fallacy is more briefly exposed in " Unto this Last," 
pp. 151-2. 



138 JOHN BUSKIN. 

humorously illustrated by the treatment of recent text- 
books. Professors Marshall and Sidgwick "retire" 
this " fundamental proposition on capital " into the ob- 
scurity of foot-notes, 1 covering their withdrawal by a 
qualified but utterly confused defence. 2 Professor 
Nicholson is the first British economist who has had the 
courage in an authoritative text-book 3 to admit the " ob- 
vious falsehood " of Mill's position, though he makes no 
acknowledgment whatever of the far more effective 
refutation given twenty-five years before by Mr. Ruskin, 
nor does he perceive that his admission involves, as it 
rightly does, the complete abandonment of the doctrine 
of " Parsimony," or the utility of unlimited saving. 

§ 7. The most highly technical department of in- 
dustrial science is currency. Probably few of those 
scientists and business men who are engaged in fighting 
the battle of the standards, or in building their highly 
intricate and often wholly illusory monetary systems, 
would condescend to read the passages in which an 
" amateur " states what he conceives to be the basic 
principles of a sound and socially serviceable currency. 
But those who understand the special weakness of all 
specialists, their detailed elaboration of superstructures 
built upon a foundation of general assumptions which 

1 Marshall, " Principles of Economics," Book VI., chap. ii. 
(note); Sidgwick, "Principles of Political Economy," Book L, 
chap. v. (note). 

2 Marshall, in a recent new edition of his "Principles," makes 
up his mind at last to a definite withdrawal of the dogma. 

3 J. S. Nicholson, "Principles of Political Economy" (1893), 
pp. 101-3. A whole series of economic writers, from the Earl of 
Lauderdale and Malthus to the present day, protested in vain 
against the acceptance of the doctrine of Parsimony, which gave 
a specious justification to this theory of Capital. 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 139 

have been commonly received upon authority, and have 
not been subjected to a strict, patient, and unbiassed 
examination, may be inclined to give serious attention 
to the clear and original analysis presented by so power- 
ful a mind as that of Mr. Ruskin. His theory of cur- 
rency, presented in " Munera Pulveris " and elsewhere, 
has not, indeed, the interest which attaches to his more 
violent "heresies," but it is a lucid presentation of 
certain fundamental principles which, rightly grasped, 
point towards financial reforms after which statesmen 
and trained financiers are tardily and darkly groping 
their way. 

Mr. Ruskin's reasoning upon this subject is more than 
usually compact in its presentation. The best summary 
is contained in the chapter of " Munera Pulveris " called 
" Coin-keeping." Currency he defines in the following 
terms : " The currency of any country consists of every 
document acknowledging debt which is transferable in 
the country." 1 "Legally authorised or national cur- 
rency, in its perfect condition, is a form of public 
acknowledgment of debt, so regulated and divided that 
any person presenting a commodity in the public market 
shall, if he please, receive in exchange for it a document 
giving his claim to the return of its equivalent (1) in 
any place, (2) at any time, and (3) in any kind." 2 

The true and full purposes of such public currency 
require (1) that a more stable standard of exchange- 
values than gold and silver should be found, for "the 

1 Students of Monetary Science will recognise a kinship to the 
theory of Money championed by M'Leod, but Kuskin nowhere in- 
dorses the inclusion of all private Credit in Money, which is the 
kernel of M'Leod's teaching. 

2 Munera Pulveris, § lxx. 



140 JOHN 11 U SKIN. 

right of debt ought not to rest upon a basis of imagina- 
tion, nor should the frame of a national currency vibrate 
with every miser's panic and every merchant's impru- 
dence." We ought, therefore, to base our currency 
upon several substances, not one, and upon " substances 
of true intrinsic value." This insistence upon the 
superior stability of a composite basis is in accord with 
the teaching of Jevons and the most liberal economists. 
The theory of taking substances of intrinsic value as the 
basis of currency, implying, as it must and would, the 
ability of farmers, manufacturers, and other owners of 
" goods " to deposit these goods in " public store- 
houses " 1 and obtain credit notes for them, places Mr. 
Ruskin in line with the advocates of Free Money as a 
protection against the monopoly of private bankers and 
money-lenders, and the dangers and waste of our private 
credit notes. An honest government not issuing any 
currency of forced acceptance (a deceitful form of taxa- 
tion), and permitting no dishonest speculation, would 
never find itself embarrassed in the theory or working 
of currency. 

Mr. Ruskin lays his finger upon the chief source of 
our instability of values and our financial crises when he 
denounces speculation. His further treatment of the 
subject in " Fors " proves his keen apprehension of the 
truth that speculation permeates the entire system of 
private credit in modern commerce, that such credit, 
though highly serviceable to the individual trader, is of 
doubtful benefit to society. Upon this matter, indeed, 
he expresses himself in no measured words. " This 
system of mercantile credit, invented simply to give 
1 Fors, iii., Letter lviii. 



FLAWS IN MODERN INDUSTRY. 141 

power and opportunity to rogues, and enable them to 
live upon the wreck of honest men — was ever anything 
like it in the world before ? That the wretched, impa- 
tient, scrambling idiots, calling themselves commercial 
men, forsooth, should not be able to see this plainest of 
all facts, that any given sum of money will be as 
serviceable to commerce in the pocket of the seller of 
the goods, as of the buyer ; and that nobody gains by 
credit in the long run ! It is precisely as great a loss to 
commerce that every seller has to wait six months for 
his money, as a gain that every buyer should keep his 
money six months in his pocket. In reality there is 
neither gain nor loss — except by roguery, when the gain 
is all to the rogue, and the loss to the true man." 1 Mr. 
Ruskin is probably right in holding that the common 
mode of swelling currency by private " bills of ex- 
change" is a socially foolish policy, and ought to be 
unnecessary even as an individual convenience, if the 
theory that " all commerce is exchange of commodities " 
worked out properly by making it as easy to sell as it is 
to buy. 

It is only the greater difficulty which owners of com- 
modities experience in selling than owners of money 
experience in buying that impels manufacturers and 
merchants, competing with one another, constantly to 
tempt buyers by offering easy terms of payment. Such 
elasticity of credit is but one more testimony to the 
most salient defect of our present industrial mechanism, 
the existence of productive power in excess of what is 
needed to satisfy the demands of current consumption. 
Under-consumption, involving, as it must, the inability 
1 Fors, Letter xxvi. (ii. 33). 



142 JOHN BUSKIN. 

of producers to find purchasers with ready money, is a 
constant stimulus of inflated credit. Sound business, as 
Mr. Ruskin clearly sees, does not rest upon credit. A 
striking testimony to this truth is afforded by the fact 
that the most important structural change in modern in- 
dustry, the growth of joint-stock companies, is attended 
by a return to the custom of ready-money payments. 
Mr. Ruskin's persistent advocacy of ready money, both 
in wholesale and retail transactions, is not merely a 
sound moral principle but a true economic policy. 

Finally, his insistence that all money means power 
over labour, authority over men, proves that he has 
brought his currency teaching into true organic relation 
with the rest of his political economy, which is more 
than can be said for most of our writers on the subject. 
The possession of money means, ultimately, the power 
to demand work, and Mr. Ruskin rightly insists that 
the true vital significance of a quantity of money 
depends upon the economic condition of the workers. - 
Where a large, poor, and degraded class of workers ] 
exists, the possession of <£5 gives me the power to force ! 
an injurious quantity of bad work out of weaklings who : 
are unable to refuse my demands; in a fairly ordered 
society of skilled and comfortable workers, the posses- 
sion of the same sum would only give me power to j 
put some of those workers to wholesome and moderate 
labour. Thus, the mere knowledge of the quantity of 
money owned by a person or a nation tells us nothing j 
of the underlying human facts. Money must be reduced ! 
to subjective or vital " cost " before its significance is 
understood. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 

§ 1. Denunciation of competition in general terms. § 2. Work 
motived by pay injures the worker. § 3. Bad influence of com- 
petition upon quality of "goods." §4. Qualifications of the 
charge of immorality. § 5. Incisive exposure of the unfair 
nature of bargaining. § 6. Proposal for a scientific basis of 
exchange. §7. Mr. Kuskin's doctrine of "No profit in ex- 
change." §8. Doctrine of the illegitimacy of interest. §9. 
Source of error in Mr. Kuskin's economic reasoning. § 10. Dis- 
tinction of charitable loans for need and loans for investment. 

§ 1. Mr. Ruskin's attitude towards competition as a 
method of determining prices and payments of any kind 
is one of unqualified hostility. The disutility and the 
immorality of industrial competition are charges he is 
never tired of pressing. " Government and Co-operation 
are in all things the Laws of Life ; Anarchy and Com- 
petition the Laws of Death." 1 He accuses the current 
economic teaching of misrepresenting the processes of 
bargaining and competition so as to conceal their im- 
moral and anti-social character. Adam Smith's doctrine 
of " the invisible hand," by whose guidance every indus- 
trial man, in following his own individual gain, was 
necessarily impelled to conduct which contributed to the 
welfare of society, indisputably underlay the current 
teaching, furnishing a utilitarian sanction. It was, 
1 Unto this Last, p. 102. 

143 



144 JOHN BUSKIN. 

indeed, no business of theirs, economists averred, to 
justify the morality of economic processes, nor to de- 
fend the motive of enlightened self-interest, by which 
" economic men " were actuated ; but this analysis of 
industry did serve, in fact, to palliate self-seeking con- 
duct by showing that it fulfilled, and by suggesting that 
it was " intended " to fulfil, a social purpose, as well as 
by presenting such an account of the processes of bar- 
gains as to teach that each man got what he deserved, 
and that substantial justice was done by the existing 
methods of appointment of wealth. 

§ 2. Now, addressing himself first to this defence 
of the " competitive system " of industry, Mr. Ruskin 
vehemently repudiates both its morality and its utility, 
the latter not only because he believes that what is 
immoral cannot be ultimately useful, but because he 
denies that the self-seeking motive of the " economic 
man" does actually impel him to a socially profitable 
line of conduct.' Competitive industry, he contends, is 
doubly degrading to the character of those engaging in 
it, both in the conscious motive it indulges and in the 
character it imposes upon work. Since profit, not excel- 
lence of work, is the admitted motive, the individual 
producer is purely self-engrossed, his selfishness not 
being tempered by any sense of social service ; in all 
the processes of buying and selling this selfishness is 
accentuated by the constant sharp antagonism between 
himself and his competitors. Any dim perception that 
competition involves some indirect co-operation towards 
a common social end is kept in the background of con- 
sciousness by the unceasing sense of struggle. A system 
which thus concentrates all thought upon profit, instead 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 145 

of upon quality of work or excellence of achievement, 
inevitably damages the character of work, and does not 
secure the utility it professes to serve. Good work can 
only be the result of a conscious effort to work well. 
A sense of enjoyment accompanies all true effort of the 
artist; no worthy art- work is produced for pay. In 
every process of art or industry, just in proportion as 
the work and its result are not valued for themselves, 
and are by their very conditions incapable of such 
valuation, will the product be base. Large quantities 
of common routine machine-made goods may be turned 
out by wholly unenjoyed and toilsome labour under- 
gone for pay, but none of the worthier forms of material 
or immaterial wealth can be thus produced. Work 
undertaken merely for pay is essentially degrading to 
the worker ; and blinded as our age is by the spurious 
ethics of commercialism, it has sufficient sound feeling to 
attest this truth by the degrees of honour it imputes 
to different kinds of workers. Why are soldiers, doctors, 
preachers, held in high social esteem ? * Because, though 
all live by their calling, the conditions of their labour 
are such as to give them an independent interest in the 
success of their work, and not to keep their minds fixed 
upon the pay they are to get for it. Again, in manu- 
facture, just in so far as an employer or a worker is 
able to take a genuine pride and interest in his work, 
apart from the profit or wage which it brings, will he 
do good work, and that work do good to him. Where 
a carpenter (not a subdivided cabinetmaker) or a tailor 
(not a presser or a button-holer) is engaged in turning 
out by skill a complete article, even modern industrial 
1 Unto this Last, pp. 25-28. 



146 JOHN BUSKIN. 

conditions preserve for him a certain dignity of labour, 
which is endorsed by the general estimate of his fel- 
lows. Why is it that merchants, and still more retail 
shopkeepers, have always been held in low esteem ? 
Mr. Ruskin's answer is conclusive. "A great deal of 
the vulgarity and nearly all the vice of retail commerce, i 
involving the degradation of persons engaged in it, 
depend simply on the fact that their minds are always 
occupied by the vital (or rather mortal) question of 
profits." 1 The carpenter is interested in his work, and 
knows that he is making a useful article ; the retailer is 
interested in persuading people to buy goods for their 
highest price, and knows only that he is making profit. 
Just in proportion as men's minds are set on profit, it 
is not their "interest" to do the best work of which 
they are capable ; it is rather their " interest " to do 
the worst work which will enable them to earn their 
pay. This is Mr. Ruskin's answer to the argument that 
love of profit will evoke good work by competition. 
Competitive profit-seeking may serve to prevent the ' 
making and the selling of bad articles where badness 
can be detected by consumers, but it is a direct stimulus 
to the practice of every art of adulteration and con- 
cealment which can escape detection, and can thus 
become the " custom of a trade ;" while it offers direct 
and prohibitive discouragement to any excellence of 
work which cannot recommend itself by specious show 
to the consuming public. The skill really stimulated 
by profit-seeking consists far more in keeping down 
expenses (not "human cost") of production than in 
improving the quality of products. 

1 Unto this Last, p. 28. 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 147 

§ 3. Similarly the direct influence of keen competi- 
tion between manufacturers or merchants is not fraught 
with the social advantage claimed for it by laissez faire 
economists. The normal result of competition is not 
to induce manufacturers to make and merchants to 
sell to customers better commodities at the same price at 
which worse commodities were sold before, but to make 
and sell at lower prices worse commodities pretending 
to be the same. This is the explanation of the " cheap 
and nasty " goods which all deplore, but which the 
poor must buy, and which sweating businesses will 
therefore make and sell. Thus one chief natural effect 
of competition is to glut markets with low-class com- 
modities, and to debauch the taste and injure the persons 
and the pockets of consumers. 

Mr. Ruskin does not, indeed, deny that improvement 
of quality and true cheapness may and do result from 
the stimulus of competition, 1 but such gains are chiefly 
confined to articles the true character of which cannot 
be concealed, and which are bought by people of some 
taste and education, who know what they are buying. 
False cheapness will always deceive the poorer and more 
ignorant buyers, and many articles are permanently and 
generally deteriorated for all classes of purchasers by the 
pressure of competition, which has gradually converted 
some insidious dishonesty into the custom of a trade. 

To these evils must be added the immeasurable waste 
involved in the actual processes of competition, the end- 
less multiplication of agents, touters, and advertisements 
of every kind, almost the whole of which must be debited 
as social loss. 

1 Munera Pulveris, § 62 (note). 



148 JOHN BUSKIN. 

§ 4. To dwell in detail upon the charges pressed 
against competitive industry is unnecessary. Most of 
them will be admitted by all thoughtful persons, though 
some considerable qualifications and offsets may be 
demanded. The selfishness of profit-seeking and com- 
petition educates, it may be claimed, intellectual and 
moral qualities of industry, thrift, foresight, self-com- 
mand, enterprise, and courage, which, even though 
devoted primarily to selfish ends, have also social worth, 
when circumstances draw them from their narrower 
occupations. The struggle for life and livelihood, it is 
contended, has never been so narrowly self-seeking as 
is sometimes alleged : in some degree it has always been 
a struggle for the life of others, directly and consciously, 
for the support and welfare of family and dependents, 
in some measure, at any rate, for the good of a trade or 
a locality ; the very Manchesterism, which is sometimes 
taken as the type of commercial selfishness, expressed 
itself in a policy which evoked a powerful common 
interest in a trade, and often a laudable self-sacrifice 
for this wider organism. 

Ignoring these actualities of modern commerce, Mr. 
Ruskin painted too dark a picture. The commercial 
man, even under the reign of steam-driven machinery, 
is not the mere " covetous machine " which the " pure 
theory" of the older economic text-books sometimes 
assumed him to be. At the same time the wide and 
glaring discrepancy between the higher teaching of 
ethics and Christianity, on the one hand, and the prac- 
tice of industry on the other, is undeniable. The man 
who loved his neighbour as himself in business would 
quickly find his way into the bankruptcy court. It can 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 149 

scarcely be denied that the net moral result of competi- 
tive industry is to promote conscious discord between 
man and man, to dissociate and not to unite human 
interests, to inure men during six days of the week to 
an attitude of mind repugnant to that teaching of the 
seventh day, which in theory they profess ought to 
govern the whole conduct of the week. 

Mr. Ruskin, therefore, even though he exaggerated 
the intensity of selfishness involved in commercial com- 
petition, and denounced in too unqualified terms its 
social inutility, must be held to have established his 
main charge, that a deep antagonism exists between our 
moral theory and our common practice in the affairs of 
life which most occupy our energies. This antagonism 
inevitably retards social progress, and all reasonable 
men must favour such reforms as shall make industry a 
conscious social bond between man and man instead of 
a conscious severance. 

§ 5. When Mr. Ruskin proceeds to specify in more 
detail the character of those bargains by which com- 
merce is conducted, he is not so exact in his reasoning 
or so successful in substantiating his charges. That 
the law of supply and demand works unjustly, that bar- 
gaining does not secure a fair or just price, that ex- 
change is conducted on a basis of fraud and force, 
these are his accusations against industry, and com- 
mercial economy he charges with aiding and abetting 
these wrongs by misrepresentations of the processes. 

In his treatment of this theme he renders one signal 
service. Although commercial economy never posi- 
tively affirmed the justice of bargaining as a means of 
exchange and of distribution, its teaching undoubtedly 



150 JOHN 11USKIN. 

conveyed the impression that substantial justice was 
achieved by these processes. The suggestion was that, 
when an act of sale took place, seller and buyer made 
an equal gain from the transaction. The unusual can- 
dour of Professor J. E. Cairnes, who said, " I am un- 
aware of any rule of justice applicable to the problem 
of distributing the produce of industry," never made its 
way into the current teaching of economics which still 
rested on the assumption that competition harmonised 
the interests of the individual with the interests of 
society, all working together for the best. Mr. Ruskin's 
flat denial of any tendency towards fair or equal 
apportionment of gain in an act of purchase or ex- 
change, is sustained by exact analysis of economic 
processes. 

His simple statement of the working of supply and 
demand is not to be gainsaid. " In practice, according 
to the laws of demand and of supply, when two men are 
ready to do the work, and only one man wants to have 
it done, the two men underbid each other for it ; and 
the one who gets it to do is underpaid. But when two 
men want the work done, and there is only one man 
ready to do it, the two men who want it done overbid 
each other, and the workman is overpaid." 1 In un- 
civilised communities force and fraud have always been 
chief means of acquiring property ; in modern industrial 
societies it is supposed that a just and rational system of 
exchange has been substituted. But when we closely in- 
vestigate the actual working of exchange, we find the 
elements of fraud and force surviving, only hidden. The 
bargain of a baker with a starving man rests upon a 
1 Unto this Last, p. 82. 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 151 

display of economic force which is present more or less 
in every bargain. 

It may be urged that Mr. Ruskin's instance improp- 
erly assmnes inequality by making two sellers face one 
buyer or vice versd. But the answer is, that over the 
larger portion of the field of exchange, the number of 
willing and effective buyers is either larger or smaller 
than the number of sellers, and the closer competition 
set in motion among those who find themselves in 
danger of being left out in the cold, does give to the 
other side the advantage of monopoly which Mr. Rus- 
kin's simple case serves to illustrate. Nor is it merely 
a question of numbers : the relative strength of eco- 
nomic resources of the two parties bargaining is the real 
criterion. In many kinds of bargains there is no direct 
competition at all upon one side or the other ; in hiring 
labour, for example, the direct needs of employer and 
labourer chiefly determine the price of the labour, and 
the more urgent need of the labourer tends to give the 
advantage to the employer. Even when a number of 
employers are genuinely competing on the one side, 
and a number of labourers on the other, there is still no 
provision for determining a " fair " wage, in the sense 
of a wage which is equally beneficial to labourer and 
employer : an equality in numbers and resources of the 
two sides still tends to give the larger gain of the bar- 
gain to one of the two parties. 

§ 6. But while Mr. Ruskin is quite justified in his con- 
viction that force lies at the root of bargaining, and that 
" robbing the poor because he is poor " is an under- 
lying principle of exchange, his insistence that equity 
in exchange consists " in giving time for time, strength 



152 JOHN BUSKIN. 

for strength and skill for skill," 1 is of doubtful validity. 
Absolute equality of time, strength, or skill, even if the 
two latter things were measurable, would not furnish 
the true basis of equality of personal services, which 
morality seems to demand. Ideally, at any rate, the 
individual capacity of each person must be taken into 
account in considering how much time, strength, or 
skill is required to balance the same time or intensity 
of labour in some other person. It is, therefore, unsafe 
to endorse Mr. Ruskin's declaration that " it is easier to 
determine scientifically what a man ought to have for 
his work, than what his necessities will compel him to 
take for it." 2 

The only definite attempt to substantiate this claim 
of a scientific basis of wages, and therefore of exchange, 
is the reference to a physiological standard of " cost," 
the clearest expression of which is contained in a letter 
addressed to the Pall Mall G-azette in 1867 : 3 " Let any 
half-dozen London physicians of recognised standing 
state in precise terms the quantity and kind of food, and 
space of lodging, they consider approximately necessary 
for the healthy life of a labourer in any given manufac- 
ture, and the number of hours he may, without short- 
ening his life, work at such business daily, if in such 
manner he be sustained. Let all masters be bound to 
give their men a choice between an order for that 
quantity of food and space of lodging, or the market 
wages for that specified number of hours of work." In 
considering Mr. Ruskin's doctrine of " intrinsic value," 
attention has already been called to the just, scientific 

1 Unto this Last, pp. 82-3. 2 Ibid, p. 90. 
3 Reprinted in " Arrows of the Chace," ii. 97. 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 153 

instinct which leads him to resolve both " cost " and 
" utility " into their physical equivalents. 1 Here, too, as 
in many other instances, we find expert economists fol- 
lowing in his footsteps. The writers of the ablest 
modern treatise upon industrial reform advocate, as the 
basis of our wage system, the recognition of a National 
Minimum, " determined by practical inquiry as to the 
cost of the food, clothing, and shelter physiologically 
necessary, according to national habit and custom, to 
prevent bodily deterioration." 2 For centuries, in fact, 
the money wages of most English labourers were regu- 
lated by rough reference to their physical requirements 
as indicated by the price of bread. But though the 
idea of a physical replacement of energy given out in 
work forms a sound basis for a minimum wage, to 
make it the sole regulator of the price of labour would 
be to ignore entirely the claim of the labourer to share 
the gain arising from the productivity of labour over 
and above a mere replacement. It would, in fact, mean 
a return to the notion which denied all " profit " to 
labour, and kept wages at a natural minimum of sub- 
sistence. Moreover, so long as a wage system exists, 
it will be necessary to consider not only the " cost " 
side of the wage question, but also the " utility " as 
represented in the demand for different kinds of labour. 
To fix wages according to a standard of physical health, 
under existing circumstances, would stereotype the eco- 
nomic condition of the working-classes, and hand over 
to the capitalist-employer all increased value arising 

1 Supra, ch. iii., p. 69. 

2 "Industrial Democracy," by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, vol. 
ii., p. 774. 



154 JOHN BUSKIN. 

from industrial improvments or growing needs of the 
consuming public. Taking Mr. Ruskin's proposal in 
further detail, the impracticability of any sufficiently 
exact agreement as to the physical needs of various 
classes of workers might be urged. This objection 
would be fatal against an attempt at a delicate and pre- 
cise determination of the needs of different classes of 
labourers, in relation to locality, sex, age, health, and 
other factors ; but it need not prevent the establishment 
of a broadly-marked " national minimum " such as Mr. 
and Mrs. Webb suggest. In other words, though 
Mr. Ruskin's proposal has a distinct scientific worth, it 
cannot fulfil the large purpose he claims for it. But this 
failure to furnish an exact scientific standard of exchange 
does not in the least degree invalidate his exposure of 
the immorality and waste involved in determining all 
payments by reference to the economic force of the 
competing and bargaining parties. 

§ 7. In pressing his charges against competitive in- 
dustry, and the economic interpretation of it, Mr. Ruskin, 
however, puts forward two highly disputable doctrines. 
The first is embodied in his teaching that there is no profit 
in exchange. Since this is one of the gravest difficulties 
in Mr. Ruskin's " economics," it demands close considera- 
tion. In his first statement of the doctrine ( " Unto this 
Last," p. 129 ), he carefully distinguishes " profit " from 
" advantage." " In exchange there is only advantage, 
i. e. a bringing of vantage or power to the exchanging 
persons. Thus, one man by sewing and reaping, turns 
one measure of corn into two measures. That is 
Profit. Another, by digging and forging, turns one spade 
into two spades. That is Profit. But the man who 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 155 

has two measures of corn, wants sometimes to dig ; and 
the man who has two spades wants sometimes to eat. . . 
They exchange the gained grain for the gained tool : and 
both are the better for the exchange ; but though there 
is much advantage in the transaction, there is no profit. 
Nothing is constructed or produced." x The orthodox 
economist's first comment is that something is produced 
by exchange, viz., utility, for things in the possession of 
those who need them more are more useful than when 
in the possession of those who need them less. Mr. 
Ruskin, however, admits an advantage accruing to both 
parties, but objects to call it profit. Economists can 
hardly blame him for insisting upon narrowing the 
meaning of a word, which, by its vagueness, has been 
the source of so much trouble in economic literature. 
It is, however, not easy to understand what Mr. Ruskin 
gains by this materialistic conception of profit, confining 
it to the construction of new material gain. He is, as 
we know, a stickler for etymology ; but there is no 
linguistic propriety which prevents the increased utility 
assigned to goods by exchange from meriting the title 
" profit." Probably the real source of the distinction is 
his conception of value as a quality intrinsic and un- 
alterable in amount attaching to forms of wealth. The 
mere act of exchange cannot increase this quality im- 
pressed on goods " by the Maker of men and things." 
There is therefore no " profit " or " advance " of value 
by exchange. Nor does Mr. Ruskin' s conception of the 
standard of exchange induce him to take a different 
view. Labour-time is the basis of exchange, and the 
act of exchange can hardly be said to consume labour- 
1 Unto this Last, pp. 29, 30. 



150 JOHN BUSKIN. 

time. There is, therefore, according to his economic 
code, no reason for assigning increased use-value (his 
" value,") or exchange-value (economic value), as the 
result of exchange. 

Mr. Ruskin's denial of " profit " to exchange, though 
a perverse and arbitrary judgment, would, however, be 
innocent if it had not visibly misled its author into later 
criticisms of exchange, which, if they have any meaning, 
signify that there can be no two-sided gain in exchange. 
This strange obliquity shows itself only a few pages 
later, in u Unto this Last" (pp. 132-3), where he con- 
demns the whole science and practice of exchange, on the 
ground that the " advantage " of exchange depends on 
cheating. " If I can exchange a needle with a savage 
for a diamond, my power of doing so depends either on 
the savage's ignorance of social arrangements in Europe, 
or on his want of power to take advantage of them, by \ 
selling the diamond to any one else for more needles 
If, farther, I make the bargain as completely advanta- | 
geous to myself as possible, by giving to the savage l 
a needle with no eye in it (reaching thus a sufficiently 
satisfactory type of the perfect operation of catallactic ( 
science), the advantage to me in the entire transaction 
depends wholly upon the ignorance, powerlessness, or 
heedlessness of the person dealt with. Do away with |i 
these, and catallactic advantage becomes impossible." 1 

Mr. Ruskin does not appear to recognise that, even in 
the cases of exchange, where one party is immeasurably i 
stronger or craftier than the other, a residuum of real [ 
gain or advantage must accrue to the weaker party, at ,; 
any rate just such minimum advantage as is sufficient 

1 p. 133. 






THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 157 

to induce him to be a party to the bargain. The mate- 
rialistic conception of " profit," which he has adopted, 
brings him back at times almost to the doctrine of the 
French physiocrats, who held that agriculture was the 
only occupation which produced value. This ancient 
position is even more logical than that which Mr. 
Ruskin adopts, for the physiocrats insisted that " pro- 
duction " should be confined to the getting of actual 
material forms out of the earth, while Mr. Ruskin al- 
lows that profit may be made by altering the shape of 
material forms, though not, apparently, by altering their 
place or ownership. For it must be clearly understood 
that Mr. Ruskin denies profit to all trade, not merely 
to the activities of the merchant or retailer in the act 
of selling, but to the importer and carrier in the act of 
conveyance. It may perhaps be said that the issue is, 
after all, a verbal one, but Mr. Ruskin does not deny 
the services of merchant or retailer, but prefers to keep 
the term " profit " for productive work in a narrower 
sense of the word " production." But, at any rate, the 
distinction is most unfortunate, for it not only misleads 
his readers, but it has duped its author, as may be shown 
by the following passage of " Fors," which will also serve 
the further purpose of introducing the second serious error 
which impairs his indictment of modern industry : 

" There are in the main two great fallacies which the 
rascals of the world rejoice in making its fools proclaim : 
the first, that by continually exchanging and cheating 
each other in exchange, two exchanging persons, out of 
one pot, alternating with one kettle, can make their two 
fortunes. This is the principle of Trade. The second, 
| that Judas' s bag has become a juggler's, in which, if Mr. 



158 JOHN BUSKIN. 

P. deposits his pot, and waits awhile, there will come out 
two pots, both full of broth ; and if Mr. K. deposits his 
kettle, and awaits awhile, there will come out two ket- 
tles, both full of fish ! That is the principle of Interest." 1 

It is a curious irony which makes Mr. Ruskin take 
such a materialistic view of wealth, so utterly incon- 
sistent with his human standard, as to make him sup- 
pose that an increase of fortune, even reckoned in 
commercial terms, requires a corresponding increase 
in quantity of material forms. Why should not an 
improved method of exchange, by merely putting the 
right things in the right hands, be held to make for- 
tunes ? for commodities, thus well disposed, are evidently 
worth more both in money and in real utility or power 
to contribute to human vitality. The charge that bar- 
gaining distributes unfairly the advantage of exchange 
need not lead us to a virtual denial of the productivity 
of trade. 

§ 8. Mr. Ruskin' s conviction of the illegitimacy of 
interest belongs to his later years. When he wrote ' 
" Munera Pulveris," the usury which he condemned 
meant, in reference to capital, taking an exorbitant rate 
of interest. 2 No special sin was attached to interest 
upon loans, except so far as it meant taking advantage 
of the borrower's poverty. But as soon as he began j 
" Fors Clavigera " further doubts arose. The first letter 
shows him probing the economic defence of interest ; 
the eighth letter contains a general assault upon " capi- 
talists' percentages ; " and by 1872 he had reached a 
settled conviction that all interest was wrong. The 
pamphlets of Mr. W. C. Sillar were largely instrumental 
1 Fors, Letter xlv. (ii. 435). 2 Munera Pulveris, § 98. 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 159 

in this conversion, 1 and in Letter xviii. of " Fors," he 
sets forth his position in a most instructive passage. 
After showing briefly that compensation for risk and 
wages of management are legitimate payments which 
form no true part of interest, he finds that the defence 
of interest, as given by Professor Fawcett, consists in 
treating it as " the reward of abstinence." " It strikes 
me, upon this, that if I had not my £15,000 of bank 
stock, I should be a good deal more abstinent than I 
am, and that nobody would then talk of rewarding me 
for it. It might be possible to find even cases of very 
prolonged and painful abstinence, for which no reward 
has yet been adjudged by less abstinent England. Absti- 
nence may indeed have its reward, nevertheless ; but not 
by increase of what we abstain from, unless there be a law 
of groivth for it unconnected with our abstinence. ' You 
cannot have your cake and eat it.' Of course not ; and 
if you don't eat it, you have your cake ; but not a cake 
and a half! Imagine the complex trial of schoolboy 
minds, if the law of nature about cakes were, that if 
you ate none of your cake to-day, you would have ever 
so much bigger a cake to-morrow ! — which is Mr. Faw- 
cett' s notion of the law of nature about money ; and, alas, 
many a man's beside, — it being no law of nature what- 
ever, but absolutely contrary to all her laws, and not to 
be enacted by the whole force of united mankind." 2 
Hence he concludes that interest is a forcible taxation 
or exaction of usury. 3 Now, this paragraph is inter- 
esting, because it thoroughly exposes the strength and 
weakness of Mr. Ruskin's position. The playful soph- 

1 Munera Pulveris, § 98 (note). 

2 Fors, Letter xviii. (i. 366). 3 Fors, Letter xxi. (i. 419). 



160 JOHN BUSKIN. 

istry of the two opening sentences may be set aside at 
once, for though it is of course true that the most pain- 
ful abstinence, that of the poor, get no reward of inter- 
est, that in no way meets the contention that interest is 
the reward of a certain sort of abstinence, viz., that of 
those who, possessing the power to consume at once, 
postpone its exercise. Since it is obviously open to this 
ambiguous interpretation, the phrase " reward of absti- 
nence " may not be the best term to describe the raison 
d'etre of interest. For this and other reasons many 
economists have preferred to rest the justification of 
interest not upon abstinence but upon the productivity 
of capital. Mr. Ruskin's real underlying argument is 
that capital is not productive, in the sense that it cannot 
grow. " Abstinence does not cause an increase of what 
we abstain from," is his first argument, enforced by the 
former of the two passages which I have italicised. But, 
jumping the metaphysics of causation, it may be an- 
swered that " abstinence " is a necessary condition of 
an increase of wealth that is due to the presence and 
use of what we abstain from. By abstaining from some 
immediate enjoyment, I can bring into existence and 
keep in use certain admittedly serviceable forms of capi- 
tal : the service these forms of capital render involves, 
and is represented by, an increased growth of wealth, 
and this increase, whether it be spoken of as " caused 
by" my abstinence or not, is at any rate conditioned 
by that abstinence : if I do not abstain, that wealth does 
not grow, and since I shall prefer present enjoyment to 
that abstinence unless I receive a portion of the increased 
wealth, interest may be regarded as a necessary reward 
of abstinence paid out of an increased product due to the 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 161 

practice of the abstinence. That abstinence alone, in 
the sense of a refusal to consume existing goods, will 
not cause increase of those goods, is true enough ; but 
neither will labour alone, or any productive power or 
condition, be effectual, except in co-operation with other 
forces. The notion which sometimes crops up in Mr. 
Ruskin's argument, as elsewhere, that " abstinence " or 
" waiting " cannot be a productive activity, rests upon 
an unconscious materialism in the conception of pro- 
ductivity, as if no action were productive except by 
direct physical operation in shaping or moving goods. 
The " waiting " of the capitalist is productive in much 
the same sense as the inspection of the overlooker in 
a mill ; it is a condition of the effective functioning 
of capital as the latter is of the effective functioning of 
labour. " But the overlooker works in return for what 
he gets, and the capitalist does not," it may be re- 
torted. However, the use of the word " work " begs 
a question. Abstinence may, and does in some capital- 
ists, imply a painful exertion of will which, if it is ser- 
viceable in industry, has the same right and natural 
need of a " reward " as labour. 

The obvious fact that much of this abstinence involves 
no pain at all is no more reason for denying the validity 
of all interest, than the equally obvious fact that some 
labour is a positive satisfaction to the labourer is a reason 
for denying him his wages. The real gravamen of the 
charge against capital is not for receiving interest, but 
for the modes by which the capital is often accumulated. 
There is, indeed, a legitimate presumption that capital, 
the saving of which involves no real sacrifice, has been 

! acquired not by honest labour but by some form of eco- 

l 

1 



162 JOHN BUSKIN. 

nomic oppression in the processes of bargaining through 
which an income is derived. It is to these processes 
that we should rightly attach the condemnation which 
Mr. Ruskin and others fasten specifically on interest. The 
Ruskin of " Fors " has in fact abandoned the far sounder 
position of " Munera Pulveris," which condemned only 
exorbitant interest due to oppression as one among 
various modes of oppressive dealing. 

Nowhere does Mr. Ruskin seriously attempt to meet 
the claim for interest upon the ground of the " produc- 
tivity " of capital. In his brilliant sword-play with the 
Bishop of Manchester he carves very prettily the the- 
ology and ethics of the bishop, but he does not fairly 
meet the contention that interest upon invested capital 
stands on a different footing from loans made to poorer 
neighbours in emergencies. The instances he quotes of 
the fraud and tyranny which mark the proceedings of cer- 
tain trading companies, the degrading influences of spec- 
ulation and so forth, are doubtless valid evidence of 
certain abuses of capital, but constitute no proof what- 
ever of his contention that interest upon all capital is 
derived from extortion. 

This controversy serves, indeed, to make it clear that 
Mr. Ruskin identifies interest with usury ; but though 
his theological arguments for doing so are strong, his i 
economical ones are weak. 

§ 9. How was Mr. Ruskin really led from condemna- I 
tion of extortion to condemnation of all interest ? The 
answer to this question is, I think, contained in the 
second phrase which I have italicised in the passage 
from " Fors " quoted above. He there speaks of " the .1 
law of nature about money." In a word, he has fallen M^ 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 163 

a victim to a famous fallacy which has in the history of 
economic thought proved fatal to many of the subtlest 
intellects the world has ever known. The intellectual 
repudiation of interest has nearly always arisen from 
the difficulty of conceiving that money could " produce " 
anything, either more money or more wealth of any 
kind. Aristotle's famous diction that " money is 
barren " expresses concisely the point of view which this 
" master of those that know " held in common with 
Moses and Jesus, most of the fathers of the Church, 
Bacon, Luther, Bossuet, and many wise men of all 
ages. 

Mr. Ruskin goes out of his way to endorse Aristotle's 
saying, 1 and several passages in " Fors " make it evident 
that the notion, that the service for which interest is 
paid is a loan of money, is at the root of his condemna- 
tion. 2 If Mr. Ruskin, debating the right of interest, had 
kept clearly before him his own theory of the nature of 
money, as expounded in "Time and Tide" and else- 
where, viz., that the essence of money, as currency, is 
that it is a sign of command over wealth in general and 
ultimately over human services, he would have recog- 
nised that a man who makes a loan of money is really 
handing over a general command of all forms of material 
or immaterial wealth, and that upon the productive use 
of this wealth, not upon the productivity of " coins," 
depends the claim of interest. The loan of money and 
the receipt of money interest are only the outward and 

1 Fors, Letter xlviii. (ii 483, note.) 

2 See especially " Fors," iii., pp. 380 and 382, Letter lxviii. ; iv. 
119, Letter lxxviii. ; cf. also "Arrows of the Chace," ii. 103, 
where Mr. Euskin calls attention to the fact that money doesn't 
"grow." 



164 JOHN BUSKIN. 

convenient form of the transaction; the substance is a 
loan of tools or goods and the receipt of tools or goods 
in return. 

§ 10. If this view is correct, it convicts Mr. Ruskin of 
serious error in his economic reasoning. But though 
the rejection of interest has so long relied upon this in- 
tellectual defence, it may be doubted whether its real 
strength has ever been derived from this source. Indig- 
nation at palpable abuse of power by usurers, and a cer- 
tain sense of brotherhood, imposing upon those who 
have to spare the duty of lending freely to those in need 
— these strong moral bases of conduct have probably 
been more influential in moulding the policy of states 
and in dominating custom than economic reasoning 
about the barrenness of money. In ancient societies 
the opportunities for productive employment of private [ 
capital were exceedingly restricted, and loans of money | 
made to tide over some season of need, or to repair 
some unforeseen misfortune, played a far more conspicu- 
ous part. The social virtues of neighbourly assistance I 
and charity are always more prized and more practised 
in primitive societies than in developed industrial com- 
munities, and the morality of a nation is particularly 
directed to such a policy by its religious and ethical 
instructors. 

Had Mr. Ruskin confined his attack upon interest to 
the reassertion of the humane charitable duty of free I 
lending to the poor, his position would have been far 
stronger than the one he actually adopted. The social 
utility of a policy of free loans will depend upon the |i 
attitude we adopt towards charity in general as a mode 
of redressing or abating social injuries. Holding with it 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 165 

Mr. Ruskin that the existing economic processes which 
apportion wealth are void of moral sanction, and that 
the pressure of need therefore does not in general imply 
moral infirmity, we may very well regard such charity 
as an informal mode of redressing certain noxious in- 
equalities of our economic arrangements. 

So far as loans to the needy are concerned, this atti- 
tude has undoubtedly a strong moral support. But in 
times when most capital is employed, not for such pur- 
poses, but for business investments of a directly produc- 
tive character, it is not possible to rely upon these moral 
motives for a general denial of the validity of taking 
interest. Mr. Ruskin, in common with many assailants 
of the theory of interest, appears to forget the vital 
difference between the " money-lender " and the " in- 
vestor." Where money is invested there is no warrant 
for supposing that the borrower cannot at least hold his 
own ; and since such investments are evidently a source 
of profit to their employment, no reason can be shown 
why that profit should be taken by the manufacturer or 
the trading company to whom the " loan " is made 
rather than by the investor. 

Indeed, the practical good sense of ancient com- 
munities, where " interest " was formally forbidden, 
generally made exception of cases where the loan 
was made to a person of substance, or was otherwise 
designed for profitable employment in business. 

The belief that all business conducted for the sake of 
I private profit is wrong, and prejudicial to the interests of 
I society, is sometimes adduced as implying a condemn a- 
| tion of interest. But the argument is entirely beside the 
I point. If all industry could be organised by society, 



166 JOHN nu SKIN. 

and conducted for the common good, no special profit 
need be asked as the reward of social saving; but so 
long as individual saving is required for the mainte- 
nance of individual business, such portion of that saving 
as involves personal sacrifice has the same natural and 
moral claim to compensation as any other order of in- 
dustrial sacrifice. Other times, other morals ! Organise 
industry upon a social basis, then individual interest will 
be unnecessary and illicit, but not till then. 

But, however wrong Mr. Ruskin may have been in 
his theory of interest, his exposure of the folly of those 
who taxed him with inconsistency in consenting to take 
interest for investments, after discovering interest was 
wrong, is exemplary. " I hold bank stock simply be- 
cause I suppose it to be safer than any other stock, and 
I take the interest of it because, though taking interest 
is, in the abstract, as wrong as war, the entire fabric 
of society is at present so connected with both usury 
and war that it is not possible violently to withdraw, 
nor wisely to set example of withdrawing, from either 
evil." * There is no more convincing testimony of the 
inherent incapacity for reasoning in the average sensual 
man than the charge of " inconsistency " brought against 
a Socialist on the ground that he does not attempt to 
cure a social evil by an individual remedy. 

The chief harm done by Mr. Ruskin's economic 
errors is that they have furnished really vulnerable 
points upon which hostile critics have concentrated all 
their fire. The social teaching of a man who denies 
the productiveness of exchange, and who challenges 
the validity of interest, it is urged, may be safely dis- 
iFors, Letter xxi. (i. 410). 



THE COMPETITIVE SYSTEM. 167 

regarded by all sane-minded and practical persons. 
So perverse is most men's judgment of criticism in- 
volving an unsettlement of convenient opinions, that 
they gladly seize upon some salient single weakness as 
a pretext for ignoring the deepest and most vital truths. 
Mr. Ruskin has remorselessly and accurately exposed 
the injustice inherent in all bargaining, and the existence 
of oppression in all forms of buying and selling, includ- 
ing the selling of the use of capital. But because he 
has found some special and separate fault in this last 
class of bargains which is not always there, his more 
fundamental criticism, which is valid, has been utterly 
disregarded by the great majority of cultured persons 
who yet pretend to think that Mr. Ruskin is a wise and 
wholesome teacher. " They read the words, and say 
they are pretty, and go on in their own ways." 1 

Well might such obdurate irrationality drive a man 
of Mr. Ruskin' s temperament to madness, as he declares 
it did. 2 Here was a man of wide experience and of the 
keenest penetration into life, coining his very soul into 
passionate eloquence and searching analysis, in order to 
convince the intellect and stir the heart of his country- 
men to see the deadly injustice and inutility of the 
existing social order, and the necessity of labouring 
energetically towards reform ; and his words are — not 
unlistened to, and not unread, that were hard enough — 
but eagerly heard and willingly read, and yet impotent 
for conviction and for the guidance of conduct. That 
people should gush over his beautiful writing about Art 
and Literature, should " sympathise " with much that 

1 Fors, Letter lviii. (iii. 176). 

2 Fors, Letters lxvi. and lxvii. (iii. 348, 362-63). 



168 JOHN BUSKIN. 

he has to say about the ugliness of industrial towns, the 
miseries of the poor, the dangers of luxury, the need of 
social solidarity, and should go their own way in com- 
fortable self-complacency, giving their usual subscrip- 
tions to " charities," and deprecating any radical change 
in this best of all possible worlds for the well-to-do — 
this surely is a more scathing indictment of his age and 
country than any that Mr. Ruskin himself uttered in his 
most impassioned moments. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 

§ 1. Statement of the practical problem of reform. § 2. The first 
provision, good birth. § 3. The second provision, good edu- 
cation. §4. u La carriere ouverte aux talens." §5. The 
utility of class distinctions for industrial and social life. 
§ 6. The problem of base mechanical work. § 7. The regula- 
tion of skilled industries by guilds. §8. The agricultural 
order — Feudalism plus direct State control. §9. Trade co- 
operation or State action ? § 10. The functions of Mr. Euskin's 
"aristocracy." §11. The scheme of government — Bishops 
and their work. § 12. The ideal and the practical in Mr. 
Ruskin's social order. 

§ 1. What is the right ordering of human activities in 
a true commonwealth ? is the great practical question as 
it presented itself to Mr. Ruskin. In " Time and Tide " 
and " Fors Clavigera " he gives his answer, describing 
those changes necessary to establish a sound society 
upon right industrial and political principles. Certain 
axioms of social justice relating to work and property 
underlie his proposals. Every man must do the work 
which he can do best, and in the best way, for the com- 
mon good and not for individual profit, receiving in return 
property consisting of good things which he has honestly 
got, and can skilfully use. * These general laws are 
applied to the circumstances of his age and country, so 
as to yield a body of definite proposals for social reform. 
iFors, Letter lxx. (iii. 411). 



170 JOHN RUSKIN. 

Education, government, industrial order, are naturally 
and necessarily involved in the art of social economics, 
as Mr. Rusk in conceived it, and his leading proposals 
may all be set in their ethical, political, or economic 
aspects. Perhaps these several aspects may best be har- 
monised by thus restating and answering the social 
question as it familiarly appeared to Mr. Ruskin. " How 
can society consciously order the lives of its members 
so as to maintain the largest number of noble and happy 
human beings ? " 

§ 2. First, adequate care must be taken to provide 
good human material. Mr. Ruskin often bitterly com- 
plains that his most vital elements of teaching are pre- 
cisely those which are ignored by his friends. Partly 
from prudishness, partly from sheer blindness, the fun- 
damental importance attached by Mr. Ruskin to " the 
population question" is completely shirked by most of 
his professed followers and lovers. Mr. Ruskin was far 
too wise not to perceive that every great social question 
has one of its roots in physiology. The first provision 
for a sound society is that its citizens shall be well born, 
the second that they shall be well educated. We have 
come to a lip agreement at any rate on this second 
requisite, but the first is still wilfully and wofully 
ignored. Yet few who face the issue can or will deny 
the truth of the solemn declaration that " the beginning 
of all sanitary and moral law is in the regulation of 
marriage, and that, ugly and fatal as is every form and 
agency of license, no licentiousness is so mortal as licen- 
tiousness in marriage." 1 That society should tacitly 
sanction the transmission and increase of every form 
1 Time and Tide, § 123. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 171 

of hereditary disease, vice or folly, ignoring its first 
duty, that of maintaining the standard of health, intel- 
ligence, and morals in the community, is quite the 
most foolish and most wasteful abdication of responsi- 
bility in which any government can possibly indulge. 
Mr. Ruskin's proposals for state " permission to marry," 
with rigid regulations as to age and income, qualified by 
fantastic revivals of ancient ceremony, may seem impos- 
sible or intolerable, but the prohibition of definitely anti- 
social marriages, the refusal to allow epileptics, criminals, 
or the victims of any serious hereditary evil, to increase 
and multiply at an incalculable cost to society, is one of 
the plainest demands of social welfare. 

§ 3. After provision for good birth comes the need of 
good education. Mr. Ruskin has so much to say about 
methods of education that it would be unwise to attempt 
to summarise his fuller teaching here. A very brief 
statement of the purpose and direction of his public 
education, which must be under state control, and free, 
liberal, and technical, will here suffice. Physical nurture 
is coupled with education in his scheme. " I hold it 
indisputable, that the first duty of a state is to see that 
every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, 
fed, and educated, till it attain years of discretion." 1 
This does not mean that children shall be taken from 
their parents' homes and brought up in state establish- 
ments, for the maintenance of home life and parental 
duties is a central feature in his conception of social 
order ; but that society shall enforce the interest it pos- 
sesses in the quality of its future citizens, by insisting 
that they shall grow up with sound physical as well as 
1 Time and Tide, § 70. 



172 JOHN RUSKIN. 

intellectual surroundings* He fully recognises that 
the enforcement of such social duty involves that " the 
government must have an authority over the people of 
which we do not so much as dream." The nature 
of this authority will be presently disclosed. 

All children, both of the operative and ruling classes, 
must first be* taught " The Laws of Health, and exercises 
enjoined by them, and to this end your schools must be 
in fresh country, and amidst fresh air, and have great 
extents of land attached to them in permanent estate. 
Riding, running, all the honest, personal exercises of 
offence and defence, and music, should be the primal 
heads of this bodily education." " Next to these bodily 
accomplishments, the two great mental graces should be 
taught, Reverence and Compassion," 1 the bases of moral 
conduct in life, and with them " truth of spirit and 
word, of thought and sight." The principal subjects of 
common education will be history, natural science and 
mathematics, the accurate teaching of language, the 
mother tongue being involved in all book studies. He 
makes a broad differentiation of education to conform 
with large local differences of life, which will probably 
control or determine later occupations. "For children 
whose life is to be in cities, the subjects of study should 
be, as far as their disposition will allow of it, mathema- 
tics and the arts; for children who are to live in the 
country, natural history of birds, insects, and plants, 
together with agriculture taught practically; and for 
children who are to be seamen, physical geography, 
astronomy, and the natural history of sea-fish and sea- 
birds." 2 Upon this broader foundation must be set the 
1 Time and Tide, § 75. 2 Ibid., § 100. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 173 

technical education, by which a child learns the calling 
by which it is to live. 

Such is a brief outline of a state policy, towards 
which civilised states to-day are surely but slowly 
moving. The vast expenditure of labour and money 
involved in such an education still staggers financiers 
and other " practical " men, who have yet to learn that 
no expenditure of public money or time is so profitably 
invested for all purposes, industrial and social, as that 
which is directly expended in raising the standard of 
human life and character. The pinchbeck policy which 
guides even our more liberal educationalists to-day will 
furnish derision and amazement to a more enlightened 
posterity. For after this ideal, as after many other 
ideals of John Ruskin, history is slowly and dimly 
groping its way. 

§ 4. But how is this educated human faculty to be 
used for public service? How is industry to be or- 
dered ? 

. Mr. Ruskin sometimes appears as the advocate of a 
New Feudalism, in which class distinctions are to be 
strictly preserved, and every man is to have a fixed 
status. But though the stress he lays upon contentment 
in men and stability in institutions, his artistic apprecia- 
tion of clear lines of social and industrial demarcation 
lends support to this view, it was not really his desire to 
establish a stereotype caste system, which should deny 
to society the services that individual genius or aptitude 
is capable of rendering. The tools, the land, the capital, 
the powers to him who can use it, is the gospel which he 
always preaches. Education, therefore, is not to be 
confined to fitting a man to work well in the condition 



174 JOHN BUSKIN. 

of life in which he happens to be born. If he has any 
special aptitude, it must be discovered and utilised. " If 
indeed no effort is made to discover, in the course of 
their early training, for what services the youth of a 
nation are individually qualified ; nor any care taken to 
place those who have unquestionably proved their fitness 
for certain functions, in the offices they could best fulfil 
— then to call the confused wreck of social order and 
life, brought about by malicious confusion and competi- 
tion, an arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the 
most insolent and wicked ways in which it is possible to 
take the name of God in vain." * 

§ 5. But, while admitting the desirability of genuine 
" equality of opportunity " for the assertion of individual 
talent, and making due allowance for effects of environ- 
ment, 2 Mr. Ruskin bases this order of industrial and 
social life upon what he calls " unconquerable differences 
in the clay of the human creature." 3 He is distinctly a 
believer both in class and individual differences, and to 
the former he attributes a natural as well as a social 
support. The children of unskilled labourers or mere 
mechanics he conceives to be rightly destined by nature 
and social convenience to unskilled and mechanical 
labour, with lives ordered accordingly ; skilled workmen 
of different sorts will, by inheritance and by association, 
be fitted to continue these crafts ; the children of pro- 
fessional and governing parents will be best adapted to 
continue these functions. His conviction of the utility 
of keeping class distinctions both in work and life is so 
strongly marked, and plays so prominent a part in his 
scheme of society, that it appears certain that he thought 
1 Time and Tide, § 6. 2 Ibid., § 107. 3 Ibid., § 107. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. IT-') 

the transference from one grade to another woulcj. be 
confined to a few exceptional cases. 

§ 6. The teaching of Plato, 1 and a fanatical abhor- 
rence of the " radical " doctrine of natural equality, com- 
bined to enforce this belief in a natural basis of class 
differences, which furnished Mr. Ruskin with a principle 
of social stratification. It first relieved him from the 
necessity of maintaining the false and foolish thesis 
that all work is in itself equally worthy and ennobling. 
This doctrine, used indifferently by flatterers of the 
working-classes to dignify manual labour, and by con- 
servative philanthropists to assuage discontent, finds 
no mercy in Mr. Ruskin's hands. He utterly denies 
that the work of a navvy or a miner well done is as 
ennobling as the work of a skilled carver in wood or 
iron. On the contrary, he insists that at the base of 
the industrial fabric there is a considerable amount 
of work to be done which is essentially low, and even 
degrading; and there are persons born who are fitted 
by nature to do this work. "The fact is, a great 
number of quite necessary employments are, in the 
accuratest sense, < servile ' — that is, they sink a man 
to the condition of a serf, or unthinking worker, the 
proper state of an animal, but more or less unworthy 
of man." 2 In this class he includes not only such 
work as mining, stoking, forging — which is essentially 
brutalising in the heavy muscular toil it involves — but 
all " simply manual occupations." 3 After a flying and 
half-satirical suggestion, the futility of which he feels, 
that earnest Christians might voluntarily undertake this 

1 cf. Munera Pulveris, pp. 134-6. 

2 Time and Tide, § 119 ; cf. also § 104. 3 § 127. 



176 JOHN BUSKIN. 

work as a sacrifice to the spirit of humility, he falls 
back upon the existence of a large number of children 
of whom nothing could be made, and who would there- 
fore rightly " furnish candidates for degradation to 
common mechanical business. , ' 1 Such work seems to 
him to require the continuance of a class of men who 
shall in all essential facts, though not in name, be slaves ; 
and that attitude of Mr. Ruskin, as of his master Carlyle, 
which seems to defend or condone " slavery," has clear 
reference to this social necessity. In " Munera Pul- 
veris," however, there is an instructive passage which 
considerably mitigates, though it does not remove, the 
harshness of this position. " The highest conditions of 
human society reached hitherto have cast such work 
to slaves ; but supposing slavery of a politically defined 
kind to be done away with, mechanical and foul employ- 
ment must, in all highly organised states, take the aspect 
either of punishment or probation. All criminals should 
at once be set to the most dangerous and painful forms 
of it ... so as to relieve the innocent population as far 
as possible ; of merely rough (not mechanical) manual 
labour, especially agricultural, a large portion should be 
done by the upper classes ; bodily health and sufficient con- 
trast and repose for the mental functions being unattaina- 
ble without it ; what necessarily inferior labour remains 
to be done, as especially in manufactures, should, and 
always will, when the relations of society are reverent 
and harmonious, fall to the lot of those who, for the 
time, are fit for nothing better." 2 

But though Mr. Ruskin, with Plato and Aristotle, tries 
to brave it out that there are base mechanic natures in- 
i Time and Tide, § 107. 2 Munera Pulveris, § 109. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 177 

tended for such work, his humanity yet revolts against 

the notion, and he looks forward to a policy which shall 

' reduce such work to a minimum, either by reform of 

! industrial processes or by keeping down as low as pos- 

I sible the demand for such base services. In connection 

I with this last point, we have an interesting distinction 

I between good and evil forms of luxury, judged not from 

! the effect upon consumers but upon producers. "You 

j may have Paul Veronese to paint your ceiling, if you 

! like, or Benvenuto Cellini to make cups for you. But 

! you must not employ a hundred divers to find beads 

j to stitch over your sleeve." a All comment upon the 

: alleged necessity of handing over "base mechanic" 

occupations to a special class is best reserved until the 

fuller classification is expounded. It must here suffice 

to observe Mr. Ruskin's own evident dissatisfaction 

with a plan which implies by his hypothesis the further 

degrading of criminals and low types of humanity. 

§ 7. Rising from this base we have grade upon 
grade of skilled manual occupations engaged in pro- 
ducing good forms of material wealth. A civilised 
society of consumers would demand sound qualities 
of largely hand-made goods, and so " the arts of work- 
ing in wood, clay, stone, and metal would all be fine 
arts," or would at any rate have elements of skill and 
individual character attaching to them. It would be 
part of the scheme of physical education that " every 
youth in the state . . . should learn to do something finely 
and thoroughly with his hands," 2 and even those who 
were not chiefly occupied in these industries might use- 
fully and pleasantly cultivate some branch of them in 
1 Time and Tide, § 131. 2 Ibid., § 133. 



178 JOHN BUSKIN. 

leisure time, while within the trades themselves there 
would be room "for nearly every grade of practical 
intelligence and productive imagination." /The organisa- 
tion of these and other industries is not clearly or con- 
sistently indicated by Mr. Ruskin. His general form is 
that of the guild, and in " Fors Clavigera " he proposes | 
that workmen shall range themselves under some twenty- 
one classes, which he names, organising themselves | 
peaceably for the conduct of their several crafts, 1 and 
acquiring the requisite land and capital. This proposal 
to transform Trade Unions into Labourers' Unions or 
Guilds, each apparently taking over the functions of 
capitalist-employer, and regulating the quality of goods 
and conditions of work, is a harking back to mediaeval- 
ism, of which there are many signs in Mr. Ruskin's 
social schemes. How this new order should be insti- 
tuted, what should be the local or industrial lines of 
demarcation, how the guilds should be governed and ' 
their rules enforced, these important questions find no 
full and satisfactory answers. It is implied both in ' 
" Fors " and in " Time and Tide " that voluntary co- 
operation of: individuals should be the basis of action. : 
Those members of any trade who favoured order and | 
honesty should constitute themselves into a guild, elect- 
ing their officers, 2 regulating methods of production, \ 
qualities of goods, and prices. The central feature of 
the system is the joint responsibility provided by the 
guild for the quality of wares made by its members, 
which would be secured by a method of warranty. 
This warrant would, of course, only apply to certain 

1 Fors, Letter lxxxix. 

2 Fors, Letter lxxxix. (iv. 374) ; but see " Time and Tide," § 139. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 179 

common standard forms of commodity. " You could 
only warrant a certain kind of glazing or painting in 
china, a certain quality of leather or cloth, bricks of 
a certain clay, loaves of a denned mixture of flour. 
Advisable improvements or varieties in manufacture 
would have to be examined and accepted by the trade 
guild : when so accepted, they would be announced in 
public reports ; and all puffery and self-proclamation on 
the part of tradesmen absolutely forbidden, as much as 
the making of any other kind of noise or disturbance." l 
For all warranted articles, prices, wages, and conse- 
quently profits, should be annually fixed : while for 
unwarranted articles made by guild members, each firm 
should regulate its own prices and make its own arrange- 
ments with its workmen, subject to a penalty in case of 
adulteration or fraudulent description. " Finally, the 
state of the affairs of every firm should be annually 
reported to the guild, and its books laid open to in- 
spection, for guidance in the regulation of prices in 
the subsequent year ; and any firm whose liabilities 
exceeded its assets by a hundred pounds should be 
forthwith declared bankrupt." 2 

Membership of these guilds was to be entirely 
optional, no monopoly or official position was to be 
assigned to them, outsiders could compete among them- 
selves and with the guild for the custom of consumers, 
as they now compete. If persons preferred to buy from 
outsiders, they could do so at their pleasure and peril. 
Two reasons are assigned for this permission of outside 
competition : first, " that it is always necessary, in enact- 
ing strict law, to leave some safety-valve for outlet of 
1 Time and Tide, §§ 78, 79. 2 j^., § 80. 



180 JOHN BUSKIN. 

irrepressible vice " — a wise and far-reaching thought, 
which advocates of all forms of state Coercion would 
do well to ponder ; secondly, in order to preserve " the 
stimulus of such erratic external ingenuity as cannot be 
tested by law." * 

The guilds of producers are to have control also of 
the retail trade, employing retail dealers as their salaried 
officers, 2 though there also outside competition is pre- 
sumably permissible. All " necessary public works and 
undertakings, as roads, mines, harbour protections, and 
the like," are to be owned and administered by the 
public for the public profit, private speculation in these 
matters being prohibited. 3 

§ 8. The organisation of agriculture is a source of 
special solicitude to Mr. Ruskin, holding, as he did, that 
peasant life is the backbone of a nation. 

In the essential and historical priority accorded to 
land reform he shows himself eminently a practical 
reformer. His insistence upon fixity of rent and secu- 
rity of tenants' improvements as the most urgent needs, 4 
indicates a firm grasp of the existing agricultural situation. 
His wide and close study of continental agriculture gives 
especial authority to his treatment, and his books, " Fors " \ 
in particular, are full of shrewd criticism and suggestion, ji 

His wider scheme of the position of agriculture in the 
ideal state is, however, fraught with peculiar difficulty 
A tempered feudalism, with nominal ownership and « 
some real control and responsibility vested in " great 
old families," while complete security of tenure and | 
freedom of cultivation is secured to a peasant class, ; 

i Time and Tide, §§ 79, 80. 2 Ibid., § 134. 3 Ibid., § 74. 
4 Fors, Letter xlv. (ii. 429). 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 181 

forms the ideal in its large outline. " The right action 
of a state respecting its land is, indeed, to secure it in 
various portions to those of its citizens who deserve to 
be trusted with it, according to their respective desires 
and proved capacities ; and after having so secured it 
to each, to exercise such vigilance over his treatment 
of it as the state must give also to his treatment of his 
wife and servants ; for the most part leaving him free, 
but interfering in cases of gross mismanagement or 
abuse of power. And in the case of great old families, 
which always ought to be, and in some measure, how- 
ever decadent, still truly are, the noblest monumental 
architecture of the kingdom, living temples of sacred 
tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be 
granted to them in perpetuity as may enable them to 
live thereon with all circumstance of state and outward 
nobleness ; but their incomes must in no wise be derived 
from the rents of it, nor must they be occupied (even 
in the most distant and subordinately administered 
methods) in the exaction of rents. That is not noble- 
men's work. Their income must be fixed and paid by 
the state, as the king's is." 1 What the actual status 
and the occupation of this feudal aristocracy, in the 
midst of a population of virtually independent peasant 
occupiers, paying rent to the state, would be, we are not 
told ; nor is it easy to conceive how, otherwise than by 
existing beautifully, they would justify the state incomes 
they receive. The separate account Mr. Ruskin gives of 
the functions of his aristocracy does not, as we shall see, 
throw much light upon this obscurity. 

The order of agriculture here indicated is seen to 
1 Time and Tide, § 151. 



182 JOHN BUSKIN. 

differ vitally from the proposed reforms of manufacture 
and commerce. The later are, for the most part, achieved 
by the growth of a voluntary state within a state : but 
for the growth of the new agricultural feudalism, no 
such natural origin is possible. It is conceivable, though 
highly improbable, that the growth of Co-operative Move- 
ments, Unions of Employers and Employed, either 
through development of profit-sharing schemes or 
along the new line of Alliances of Labour Unions 
and Masters' Federations, might lead to the establish- 
ment, in all or most industries, of voluntary associations 
which should fulfil the functions of Mr. Ruskin's guilds. 
But it is hardly conceivable that the present land system 
should be revolutionised by the voluntary cession of the 
right to draw rents and to control cultivation, enjoyed 
now by private landowners. Such changes as are re- 
quired by Mr. Ruskin's land system would require state 
coercion, a practical nationalisation of the land, 1 which 
might then be handed over to tenants paying state rents 
and subject to state control, along with a sort of idyllic 
suzerainty to some local magnate. 

L § 9. That Mr. Ruskin does in fact oscillate between 
voluntary co-operation and state action is illustrated 
otherwise. The guild system above^ described repre- 
sents the later thought of "Time and Tide" and j 
« Fors." 

In the preface of " Unto this Last " we have the 
government undertaking the functions which in his 
later scheme Mr. Ruskin assigns to voluntary guilds. 
In this earlier treatise " there should be established — 
entirely under government regulation — manufactories 
x See, however, "Fors," Letter lxxxix. (iv. 374.) 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 183 

and workshops for the production and sale of every 
necessary of life, and for the exercise of every useful 
art," with the same safeguards of private competition 
accorded in his later treatment, " interfering no whit 
with private enterprise, nor setting any restraint or tax 
on private trade, but leaving both to do their best and 
beat the government if they could ; there should, at 
these government manufactories and shops, be authori- 
tatively good and exemplary work done, and pure and 
true substance sold ; so that a man could be sure, if 
he chose to pay the government price, that he got for 
his money bread that was bread, ale that was ale, and 
work that was work." * 

That Mr. Ruskin never definitely abandoned this 
idea of limited State Socialism for a thoroughly 
thought-out scheme of voluntary co-operation may be 
seen best by examining the functions of government 
which he destined for the upper classes. 

§ 10. The learned professions, the fine arts, and the 
work of government are reserved for Mr. Ruskin's 
aristocracy, because he holds they are by nature and 
training best qualified to do this work. Apparently he 
is willing to take the " upper classes " as they are, with 
every allowance for the degrading influences of plutoc- 
racy and the degeneration caused by luxury, and to 
moralise and elevate them into a condition which will 
justify their social and industrial supremacy. His 
reasoning is based upon curiously simple and defective 
generalisations of history and heredity. "The upper 
classes, broadly speaking, are originally composed of 
the best-bred (in the merely animal sense of the term), 
1 Unto this Last, xvii., xviii. 



18-4 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the most energetic, and most thoughtful of the popu- 
lation, who, either by strength of arm seize the land 
from the rest and make slaves of them, or bring desert 
land into cultivation, over which they have therefore, 
within certain limits, true personal right ; or by industry 
accumulate other property, or by choice devote them- 
selves to intellectual pursuits, and, though poor, obtain 
an acknowledged superiority of position, shown by bene- 
fits conferred in discovery, or in teaching, or in gifts 
of art. This is all in the simple course of the law of 
nature ; and the proper offices of the upper classes, 
thus distinguished from the rest, became therefore in 
the main threefold : 

" A. Those who are strongest of arm have for their 
proper function the restraint and punishment of vice, 
and the general maintenance of law and order ; releasing 
only from its original subjection to their power that 
which truly deserves to be emancipated. 

" B. Those who are superior by forethought and 
industry have for their function to be the providences 
of the foolish, the weak, and the idle; and to estab- 
lish such systems cf trade and distribution of goods 
as shall preserve the lower orders from perishing 
by famine or any other consequence of their care- 
lessness and folly, and to bring them all, according 
to each man's capacity, at last into some harmonious 
industry. 

" C. The third class, of scholars and artists, of course, 
have for their function the teaching and delighting of 
the inferior multitude. 

"The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, 
is to keep order among their inferiors, and raise them 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 185 

always to the nearest level with themselves of which 
those inferiors are capable." 1 

It is not to some ideally selected aristocracy of the 
future, but to the existing aristocracy, " however de- 
graded," that he looks for the fulfilment of these high 
duties. This aristocracy, in accordance with the above- 
named functions, is divisible into three great classes. 
First, the landed proprietors and soldiers, essentially 
one political body (for the possession of land can 
only be maintained by military power) ; secondly, the 
moneyed men and leaders of commerce ; thirdly, the 
professional men and masters in science, art, and 
literature. 2 

For doing this work these classes are to be main- 
tained by salaries from the state, and not by casual 
fees ; they are to be specially educated for their work 
in state schools, and are to be in every way regarded 
as public officers. Mr. Ruskin has no words of sufficient 
condemnation for the degrading influence of profit- 
mongering in the higher arts and professions ; and fixed 
pay for fixed appointments is the principle he advocates. 
Here, however, as elsewhere in his reformed society, 
lurks some inconsistency. To Mr. Ruskin, in "Fors 
Clavigera," not only does it appear degrading to intro- 
duce competition for money into the professions, but 
even to make them necessary in the sense that they 
form the basis of a livelihood. There the state art- 
doctrinex is* announced that "food, fuel, and clothes 
can only be got out of the ground, or sea, by muscular 
labour ; and no man has any business to have any 
unless he has done, if able, the muscular work necessary 
!Time and Tide, §§ 138, 139. 2 Ibid., § 142. 



186 JOHN BUSKIN. 

to produce his portion, or to render (as the labour of 
a surgeon or a physician renders) equivalent benefit 
to life." l This requirement of direct vital service, 
while it does not narrow Mr. Ruskin down to the 
" bread labour " enjoined by Tolstoy, does involve the 
insistence that " the mercenary professions of preach- 
ing, lawgiving, and fighting must be utterly abolished." 
Such work is to be an honourable service rendered 
gratuitously by skilled persons who have earned their 
living by some physical work. " Scholars, painters, 
and musicians," he concedes, " may be advisedly kept 
on due pittance, to instruct or amuse the labourer after, 
or at, his work." 

§ 11. Although it would seem consistent with Mr. 
Ruskin' s fuller sense of social economy to derive his 
governing power from all classes, cultivating natural 
aptitudes wherever they might be displayed, his strong 
appreciation of fixed orders shows itself in allotting 
state authority to the land-owning aristocracy. The 
sciences of war and of law are in particular assigned 
to them. The scheme of state authorities which he 
lays down is the following: 

(1) The king, exercising, as part both of his pre- 
rogative and his duty, the office of a supreme judge 
at stated times in the central court of appeal of his 
kingdom. 

(2) Supreme judges, appointed by national election, 
exercising sole authority in courts of final appeal. 

(3) Ordinary judges, holding office hereditarily under 
conditions, and with power to add to their number (and 
liable to have it increased if necessary by the king's ap- 

1 Fors, iii. 370, Letter lxvii. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 187 

pointment) ; the office of such judges being to administer 
the national laws under the decision of juries. 

(4) State officers, charged with the direction of 
public agency in matters of public utility. 

(5) Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and 
aid, to family by family, and person by person. 

(6) The officers of war of various ranks. 

(7) The officers of public instruction, of various 
ranks. 1 

Reserving all comments upon the general charac- 
teristics of this aristocratic government until the fol- 
lowing chapter, I must allude to one essential feature 
provided in section (5). The typical character of mod- 
ern anarchism, as Mr. Ruskin saw it in English society, 
consists in people " minding their own business," and 
not being " their brothers' keepers." In old feudalism 
every one was some one's " man ; " owned some politi- 
cal superior to whom he was responsible for certain 
services, and who in return was rightly bound to de- 
fend him and his family, their life, property, and status. 
Never perhaps in the world's history has the particular 
form of helpless, hopeless " liberty " which shows itself 
in the poorer life of our great modern cities, elsewhere 
appeared ; where families, grown up in want and igno- 
rance, struggle for a bare subsistence, live in disorder 
and degradation, and die without society giving to 
them any systematic recognition whatever. The casual 
and arbitrary interference of the police, the equally 
casual enforcement of a few social regulations respect- 
ing the rudiments of sanitation, hygiene, and education, 
the legal registration of a few cardinal facts of life and 
i Time and Tide, § 153. 



188 JOHN BUSKIN. 

death — at certain odd intervals this machinery of social 
order impinges upon the " liberty " of the citizen. But 
there is no pretence of any genuine social education 
and social supervision. The state, the city, the parish 
have no real official knowledge or control of the lives 
of the great mass of the population. So long as this 
is so, there can be no government that is worthy the 
name. The responsibility of all to each and of each 
to all is the essential of true citizenship. To embody 
this responsibility in right human institutions is the real 
problem of government from the political point of view. 
Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Ruskin's fancy for names has 
stood much in his way. His insistence that it is the 
duty of a " Bishop " or " Episcopus," in accordance 
with the derivation of his title, to "keep an eye" on 
each body and soul in his diocese, 1 moved the ridicule 
of many who had not the humour or the sense to 
follow Mr. Ruskin's dialectics of reform. He was 
obliged to explain that what he really meant was that 
a public officer should be appointed for every hundred 
families or so, in order to render account of their 
lives to the state, so that public cognisance might be 
taken of the good and evil in their lives, that help, 
reward, and punishment might be rendered with in- 
telligence and efficacy, by a society organised to give 
all possible support to the individual life, not merely 
in the way of restraint and prohibition, but of rewards 
and encouragements. These bishops or overseers were 
to fulfil the functions of pastors and biographers, keep- 
ing full records of all families within their charge, and 
above them should be set higher officers of state in 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 22. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 189 

charge of larger districts. * Thus, and thus alone, could 
the full vital resources of a society be rightly known and 
utilised for public services. 

This scheme is distinguished in two ways from the 
police superintendence which prevails in some countries. 
In the first place, it would be engaged not merely in 
marking a few leading facts of external life and conduct 
— chiefly the irregularities of life — but in keeping a 
just register of all essential facts. Secondly, it would 
presume a genuine spirit of humanity and sympathy 
animating the civic system, and softening the asperities 
of official investigation as commonly conducted by the 
perfunctory labours of uninterested officers. 

§ 12. The scheme indicated in " Time and Tide," 
and elsewhere, makes no pretence to completeness of 
detail, and is not always clear or consistent in its main 
outlines. But, read in the light of his social ideals, the 
proposals have yet a powerful coherence and a genuinely 
practical value, which may be tested by observing the 
many independent social forces of our age which are 
moving towards a similar constructive policy. There 
are, indeed, as is admitted, not a few discrepancies in 
Mr. Ruskin's presentment. Such discrepancies seem to 
belong partly to differences of reform-focus. Sometimes 
he is asking and answering the question, What is the 
line of present practicable progress ? Sometimes again 
he gives his imagination and his logical faculty freer 
scope, and depicts the structure of a society under ideal 
conditions. But another difference arises in connection 
with " Fors Clavigera " and " Time and Tide." Both 
were later products, representing a somewhat disillu- 
1 Time and Tide, §§ 72-74. 



190 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sioned view of life : he no longer looked to a perfected 
state to order work and life in complete harmony; 
small, local, detailed experiment occupied him more, and 
his appeal was more addressed to individual well-wishers, 
and less to statesmen or wholesale economic reformers. 

Yet ever and anon in the midst of his more detailed 
practical schemes, he returns to the larger ideal. The 
idea of an enduring and united commonwealth, a state 
in that meaning of the word which he dwells upon in 
" Sesame and Lilies," " without tremor, without quiver 
of balance, established and enthroned upon a foundation 
of eternal law, which nothing can alter or overthrow," * 
always had a powerful hold upon his imagination, and 
all schemes of partial co-operation to which he lent his 
voice may be regarded as purely provisional " concessa 
propter duritiem cordis." 

The schemes of social reform, which I have outlined 
chiefly in his own words, never took such shape as can 
rightly justify their submission to detailed criticism. 
They may rather be regarded as speculative experiments, 
in part the application of large political and economic 
ideals which underlay his criticism, by whittling them 
down to meet the broadly conceived conditions of actual 
life, in part the enlargement into wider social forms of 
certain practical experiments which he was engaged in 
trying upon a small scale on his own account. 

In spite of those brilliant flashes of convincing realism 
which he was able to impart into all his proposals, it is 
easy to see that their author has far too keen a knowl- 
edge of the present possibilities of human nature to 
indulge any swift hopes of realisation. The note of 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 52. 



THE TRUE SOCIAL ORDER. 191 

disappointment, often of despair, is sounded many times, 
and more frequently than ever in " Fors." Though 
progress moves in many of the directions which Mr. 
Ruskin's imagination foreshadowed, his ideal society, as 
he sorrowfully allows, must rank with Plato's, though 
with Plato he likewise insists that for the good man such 
ideals are " practical." " In heaven there is laid up a 
pattern of such a city : and he who desires may behold 
it, and beholding, govern himself accordingly. But 
whether there really is, or will be, such an one, is of no 
importance to him, for he will act according to the laws 
of that city and no other." * 

1 Republic, ix. 592. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 

§ 1. How far Mr. Ruskin is a Socialist. § 2. Acceptance of many 
distinctive economic doctrines of Social Democracy. § 3. 
Limitations of his economic Socialism. § 4. Leanings to 
Christian Socialism. § 5. An enemy of Liberalism and Democ- 
racy. § 6. Affinities with J. S. Mill and Mazzini. § 7. The 
natural and inherent u slavery" of the masses. § 8. Reliance 
on the moral initiative of the classes. § 9. Is Mr. Ruskin's 
policy of moral appeal efficacious ? § 10. The need of organic 
social action. § 11. Moralising the employer. § 12. Moralising 
the consumer. § 13. The individual solution proved to be un- 
tenable. § 14. Irreverence not essential to Democracy. § 15. 
Absolute equality not essential to Democracy. § 16. The 
rational interpretation of Democracy. 

§ 1. What is Mr. Ruskin's proper place among Social 
Reformers ? In attempting to answer this question, it 
will be most convenient to begin by asking another. In 
what sense is Mr. Ruskin a Socialist ? Having already 
collected much evidence upon this head, it is only neces- 
sary to focus it by a judgment which shall bear in mind 
the different grades of loose meaning attached to the 
term Socialism. Considered as a philosophic term, 
Socialism is best taken to imply an organic view of 
social life, which accords to society a unity not consti- 
tuted of the mere addition of its individual members, 
but contained in a common end or purpose, which deter- 
mines and imposes the activities of these individual 

192 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 193 

j members. In this sense Mr. Ruskin is a pronounced 
I Socialist, enforcing his theory by analogies constantly 
! drawn from the conscious organic life of animals, and 
! ignoring those points of defect or difference which some 
I philosophic Socialists admit, in comparing the organised 
I structure of political and industrial society with human 
I life in the individual man. 

But even in theoretic discussions Socialism commonly 
means more than a bare adhesion to some organic view 
of social life. It implies at least a tendency to favour 
increased social activity in politics and industry, either 
through the instrumentality of the state or by voluntary 
co-operation for common ends. Now Mr. Ruskin dis- 
tinctly favours the largest substitution of public for 
private enterprise, and a public superintendence and 
control of the details of individual life by the state. 
" Live openly " is not merely an ethical precept binding 
upon the individual good citizen, but a public interest 
to be enforced by public provision. Such freedom as is 
granted to individuals to hold and till land, to make and 
sell goods of any kind, proceeds from the positive, as 
distinct from the tacit, consent of society. Large sec- 
tions of industrial work are to be directly ordered and 
managed by state officials. The guild system, though 
in some places treated as a voluntary co-operative move- 
ment, is in effect to be a public institution ; : and though 
provisional liberty is granted to buy and sell goods pro- 
duced under free competitive conditions, this is evidently 
regarded as an imperfection which would disappear with 
the fuller growth of the sense of commonalty. 

In this general economic sense, as approving the 
1 Time and Tide, § 3. 



194 JOHN RUSKIN. 

increased ownership and control of industry by the 
state, Mr. Ruskin, then, will also rank as Socialist. 
But how far is his teaching to be identified with that of 
the movement commonly described as Socialist, and in 
particular with the large continental organisation which 
has assumed that name ? 

There are many close points of resemblance in social 
criticism. The general humanitarian revolt against the 
misery and the social injustice implied by poverty, the 
corrupting influences of luxury, and the base origin of 
riches has never been so eloquently voiced by any other 
"agitator." His insistence that "large fortunes cannot 
honestly be made by the work of any one man's hands 
or head," * always implying the " discovery of some 
method of taxing the labor of others," 2 his contemp- 
tuous repudiation of charity as a substitute for justice, 
his demand that property shall be set upon a sound 
basis both of origin and use, 3 are agitating doctrines 
which Mr. Ruskin never shrinks from driving to their 
logical conclusions. The plainest and most fearless 
statement of the case is in a letter to the Pall Mall 
G-azette in 1873, 4 which contains the words : " These 
are the facts. The laborious poor produce the means of 
life by their labour. Rich persons possess themselves by 
various expedients of a right to dispense these ' means 
of life,' and keeping as much means as they want of it 
for themselves, dispense the rest, usually only in return 
for more labour from the poor, expended in producing 
various delights for the rich dispenser." 

§ 2. But Mr. Ruskin comes even nearer to continental 

i Time and Tide, § 81. 2 Munera Pulveris, § 139. 

3 Fors, iii. 411. Letter lxx. 4 Arrows of the Chace, ii. 100. 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 195 

Socialism on its economic side. Three of the most dis- 
tinctive demands of Social Democrats are : First, the 
abolition of " the competitive system " of industry under 
private control for profit, and the substitution of publicly 
organised industry for use ; second, the abolition of rent 
and interest; third, the establishment of a labour-basis 
of exchange. Now Mr. Ruskin's acceptance of these 
fundamental planks of the Socialist platform is well-nigh 
complete. That powerful chapter in " Unto this Last," 
entitled " The Roots of Honour," is nothing but a 
splendid moral pleading for the abolition of " profit " as 
an industrial motive, and the adoption of social service 
in its place ; and this principle was at once the earliest, 
the most constant, and the most consistent of his social 
teachings. His rejection, alike on moral and utilitarian 
grounds, of rent and interest, has already been subject 
of comment. His demands in this regard may be con- 
cisely summed up in the language of " Fors i" 1 " That 
the usurer's trade will be abolished utterly ; that the 
employer will be paid justly for his superintendence, but 
not for his capital ; and the landlord paid for his super- 
intendence of the cultivation of land, when he is able to 
direct it wisely." 

Not only is Mr. Ruskin a Socialist in his criticism 
of competition and profitmongers : he also adopts the 
corner-stone of the constructive economic theory of 
Marx and his followers, quantity of labour as the basis 
of exchange for commodities. " Equity can only con- 
sist in giving time for time, strength for strength, and 
skill for skill." 2 It is true that, when he is upon his 
guard, he insists upon qualitative differences of labour 
1 Letter lx. (iii. 226). 2 Unto this Last, p. 83. 



196 JOHN BUSKIN. 

as grounds for differential remuneration, 1 but in his 
more abstract treatment of exchange value and prices he 
often adopts 2 labour-time as his standard, using language 
very similar to that which we find in the Socialist bible, 
" Das Capital," and utterly ignoring the influence of 
" utility," which receives so much attention from most 
modern economists. 

The " right to labour," and the correspondent duty of 
the state to furnish work and wages in public workshops 
to all unemployed persons, are fully admitted in the 
preface to " Unto this Last," where he insists " that any 
man, or woman, or boy, or girl out of employment, 
should be at once admitted at the nearest government 
school, and set to such work as it appeared, on trial, 
they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determinable 
every year ; " 3 compulsion of the most stringent order 
being applied in the case of shirkers or confirmed idlers. 

All these are crucial points, which place Mr. Ruskin's 
teaching in close sympathy with the tenets of revolu- 
tionary Socialism. 

§ 3. There are, however, certain important limitations 
to his economic Socialism. His treatment of the whole 
land question sometimes brings him near to those indi- 
vidualists who look to peasant proprietorship as the 
economic basis of a healthy society. Possession of land 
by an occupying owner with inheritance and even the 
maintenance of primogeniture are the principles he lays 
down in " Fors." 4 It is true that the quantity of land 
to be held is to be limited by capacity to use it, and the 
king and the state overseers are to exercise a general 

1 E. g. Unto this Last, p. 94. 

2 E.g. Munera Pulveris, §§ 63, 64. 8 P. xviii. 4 Letter lxxxix. 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 197 

power of superintendence and control, while a rent or tax 
is to be paid to the state. But the reiterated stress 
upon a possession which is virtually free ownership with 
hereditary tenure, is recognised by Mr. Ruskin himself * 
to be antagonistic to the " Land Nationalisation " which 
all revolutionary Socialists include in their programme, 
nor does he deal in any manner conformable to Socialist 
principles with the ownership and control of city lands 
and other land not used for purely agricultural purposes. 
Both land and houses are to all intents the private 
property of the occupants, for " no landlord has any 
business with building cottages for his people. Every 
peasant should be able to build his own cottage — to 
build it to his own mind ; and to have a mind to build 
it to." 2 

While Mr. Ruskin nowhere descends to the " peasant 
worship " in which Tolstoy indulges, the importance he 
attaches to the agricultural industries, established upon 
this basis of nominal state-tenancy but practical private 
ownership, removes him widely from the Socialism 
which regards town life and subdivided labour under 
machinery as the salient features of the new civilisation, 
and their economical ordering for the public good as 
the chief concern of revolutionary reformers. 

Nor if we turn from agriculture to other industries 
do we find Mr. Ruskin consistently sound upon the prin- 
ciple of "public ownership and control." Carlyle and 
a certain temperamental individualism of his own, trace- 
able in all strong men, had impressed upon him the 
need of a full application of the precept, " the tools to 
him who can use them." The whole tenor of his volun- 
1 Letter xcv. 2 Eagle's Nest, § 200. 



108 JOHN BUSKIN. 

tary guild system with liberty to employers to remain 
outside and to compete with the public workshops, and 
the suggestion that the latter might be confined to the 
production of certain classes of standard necessary 
wares, is quite inconsistent with the teaching of Social 
Democracy in its modern form. Perhaps the single 
passage which best shows how far he stands from the 
full acceptance of economic Socialism is that in which 
he advocates an " interim " policy by which a master, 
after paying a standard wage and providing for sick 
and superannuated workers, shall " be allowed to retain 
to his own use the surplus profits of the business." 1 
Yet even on this point there is a growing tendency in 
the more moderate wing of continental Socialists to 
accept some such provisional arrangement. The part 
of Mr. Ruskin's economic policy, which really severs 
him most distinctly from the main body of avowed 
Socialists, is the reversion to the medievalism of a guild 
system, voluntary in its membership and self-governing 
in its constitution. But even with this notion sections 
of continental Socialists have sometimes coquetted, both 
in the early schemes for state-assisted industrial societies, 
which Schulze-Delitzsch advocated, and in the propa- 
gandism of the Catholic Socialist party, in whose plat- 
form the establishment of monopolist guilds under state 
patronage and clerical control generally forms the most 
imposing plank. 2 

§ 4. In the general spirit of his teaching and in the 
stress which he lays upon religious authority as a vital 
function in good government, Mr. Ruskin approaches 
far nearer to the position of the more radical school of 

1 Time and Tide, § 5. 2 See Nitti's " Catholic Socialism." 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 199 

Christian Socialists than to the continental party of 
Social Democracy with their anti-religious tendency and 
their leanings towards the use of physical force. 1 It is 
true that Mr. Ruskin has a far stronger and more consist- 
ent intellectual basis than Catholic or Anglican Socialists 
have succeeded in impressing on their movement. Chris- 
tian Socialists generally evade such economic analysis 
as yields a rigid condemnation of rent, monopoly profits, 
and other unearned elements of income, preferring 
to dwell upon the obligations which attach to riches, 
than upon the necessity of such drastic reforms of 
industrial institutions as shall make riches impossible. 
Though there are bold individual exceptions, this is a 
characteristic attitude of the party, which leans to charity 
rather than to justice as the typically Christian basis of 
reform. Though Mr. Ruskin never acquiesces in this 
policy, and in many powerful utterances denounces 
the notion of supposing that reformed expenditure of 
income can enable us to dispense with scrutiny of the 
origins of incomes, he falls not infrequently into a 
genuinely " sentimental " vein, which, detached from 
his revolutionary analysis of economic forces, is eagerly 
exploited by those who shrink from the application of 
his more heroic remedies. Let me quote one such 
instance from " Fors : " " Therefore, you who are eating 
luxurious dinners, call in the tramp from the highway 
and share them with him, — so gradually you will under- 
stand how your brother came to be a tramp; and 
practically make your own dinners plain till the poor 

1 Important modifications are, however, now visible in the 
Social Democratic party in favour of abandoning a definitely anti- 
religious policy, and of a clearer recognition of peaceable evolu- 
tion as an instrument of reform. 



200 JOHN BUSKIN. 

man's dinner is rich, — or you are no Christians; and i 
you who are dressing in fine dress, put on blouses and ! 
aprons, till you have got your poor dressed with grace ! 
and decency, — or you are no Christians ; and you who 
can sing and play on instruments, hang your harps on the 
pollards above the rivers you have poisoned, or else go 
down among the mad and vile and deaf things whom 
you have made, and put melody into the souls of them, 
— else you are no Christians." 1 

Literally understood, such advice is heroic, though, as ' 
I shall presently show, quite ineffectual as a means of ' 
social reform; copiously watered down it furnishes | 
an attractive policy for many persons smitten with 
social compunction and prepared to make some not 
too great personal sacrifice for the cause of the poor, 
but not prepared to recognise or to cut away the 
economic roots of poverty. 

It is only natural that the virtue of self-sacrifice, ' 
which, from the more rigid types of asceticism to the 
milder types of charity, has in all ages been accepted as I 
the kernel of Christian holiness, should be used once 
more to salve the diseases of society, and Mr. Ruskin, 
whose Puritan forbears and early training had impressed 
upon his temperament a powerful strain of this asceti- j 
cism, gave vivid expression to it when the spirit of i 
prophetic denunciation seized him. 

An even stronger bond of sympathy with Catholic 
Socialism is Mr. Ruskin' s advocacy of a theocracy. 
Spiritual authority, derived from the Fatherhood of God, 
and administered on earth by divinely appointed bishops 
and by a hierarchy of " orders," penetrating all the 
1 Fors, Letter lxxxii. (iv. 225). 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 201 

details of social life — such a vision found eager accept- 
ance among many " churchmen," who look to a revival 
of the popular power of the priesthood, and are even 
willing to modify their stress upon " another life " in 
favour of a better life on earth, partly because the 
defences of " supernaturalism " have been weakened by 
the inroad of rationalism, partly because the growing- 
sense of continuity between this world and another has 
genuinely raised the value of this life even for con- 
vinced believers in another. How far such Christian 
Socialists would be prepared to conform to the lines 
of demarcation which Mr. Ruskin laid down between 
spiritual and temporal authorities, may well be doubted. 
Perhaps only a small minority of them would accept 
his virtual abandonment of dogmatic religious teaching 
or his suggestion of a union of Churches. But the 
position of spiritual authority which Mr. Ruskin would 
accord the reconstituted Church is genuinely acceptable 
to many " advanced " men in the Roman and English 
Churches. 

§ 5. This character, which most recommends Mr. 
Ruskin to the Churches, his stress upon " authority," 
serves to sunder him very definitely both from organised 
Social Democracy and from most milder economic move- 
ments in the same general direction. For his conception 
of the rightful operation of " authority," alike in spiritual 
and temporal affairs, induces a complete and vehement 
rejection of the forms of government generally identified 
with democracy. It is not merely a disbelief in the 
efficacy of representative institutions, but a deeper dis- 
trust of the ability of the people to safeguard or advance 
their true interests. Even those forms of organised 



202 JOHN BUSKIN. 

self-help which have won the approval of many of our 
most conservative minds, the co-operative movement 1 
and trade unionism, evoke in him a doubtful and 
imperfect sympathy. 

Order, reverence, authority, obedience, these words 
are always on his lips, these ideas always present in his 
mind. Radical and revolutionary doctrines and move- 
ments, as he interprets them, imply the rejection and 
overthrow of these principles, and are denounced ac- 
cordingly. Liberty and equality he scornfully repudiates 
as the negation of order and government. " No liberty, 
but instant obedience to known law and appointed per- 
sons; no equality, but recognition of every betterness 
and reprobation of every worseness." 2 

His detestation of liberty and equality brought him 
into strange company and into strange historic judg- 
ments. With Carlyle and the autocratic Tory party of 
the day he stood for " order and a strong hand " in the 
Jamaica business, taking a leading part on the Eyre 
Defence Committee. His hatred of republican govern- 
ment was manifested in express admiration for " the 
firm and wise government of the third Napoleon," 3 
words written when the infamous coup oVetat of this 
mountebank monarch was still fresh in the memory of 
men. It is true that later events tempered this admira- 
tion, but Mr. Ruskin never ceased to dwell exultingly 
upon the spell-bound impotence of the French republi- 
cans before this shadow of a king. 4 

The whole trend of modern Liberalism, as he saw 
it, was towards anarchy, — a levelling of social and 

1 Time and Tide, §§ 4, 5. 2 Fors, Letter v. (i. 101). 

3 On the Old Koad, vol. i., § 259. 4 Fors, Letter x. (i. 194-5). 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 203 

political distinctions, the distribution of political power 
upon a basis of arithmetical equality, and a decay of 
habits of reverence and discipline. 

Disclaiming respect for either of the great modern 
political parties, Mr. Ruskin sometimes speaks of him- 
self as " an old Tory," sometimes as an " Illiberal." 1 
The United States of America always served him as 
a terrible example of the effect of liberal ideas and 
institutions upon life and character. What was to be 
expected from " a country so miserable as to possess 
no castles," 2 no aristocracy, where every one had the 
same voting power, and elected his president and his 
I very judges. The specialty of America was evidently 
"to teach people how not to worship." 3 

It is not difficult to understand how Mr. Ruskin 
should be repelled by what he regarded as the final 
and necessary effects of Liberalism — the levelling of all 
distinctions between class and class, man and man ; the 
disintegration of all moral and practical authority. His 
theory of art, including the art of social life, is based, 
as readers of " Modern Painters " will remember, upon 
the validity of " specific characters," the reality of 
"class" distinctions. ^Esthetic satisfaction as well as 
moral order requires this harmonious gradation ; organic 
unity, whether in the composition of a picture or of a 
society, depends on the co-operation of unequals, not 
upon the mere accumulation or co-ordination of equals. 
"The strongest man" is not, as one of Ibsen's heroes 
says, " he who best can stand alone," for such a being, 
independent of his fellows, is less than man. " For the 

1 Fors, Letter i. (i. 4). 2 Fors, Letter x. (i. 193). 

3 Fors, Letter xii. (i. 249) ; cf. Time and Tide, §§ 141, 142. 



204 JOUN BUSKIN. 

true strength of every human soul is to be dependent 
on as many noble as it can discern, and to be de- 
pended upon by as many inferior as it can reach," is 
Mr. Ruskin' s doctrine. 

All social order is built upon authority of superiors, 
which imposes upon inferiors an absolute, unquestion- j 
ing obedience. This was the first and foremost of those j 
"strange ideas about kings" which Mr. Ruskin had I 
eagerly imbibed in childhood from Homer and from 
Scott. 1 The " people " were but common stuff to ' 
Homer : helpless scores of them fell in battle before ' 
the sword of Hector or Achilles; if a stray voice of | 
theirs dared to offer counsel to the masters, it was 
answered with a jeer and a blow. Plato and Carlyle 
taught him the eternal need of an aristocracy of intellect. 
Naturally gifted with reverence and admiration for great 
men, Mr. Ruskin eagerly absorbed the hero-worship of I 
Carlyle, and came to look upon history as " the biog- ' 
raphy of great men," though he retained some fuller 
sense of national as distinct from individual forces than I 
did Carlyle. In no matter perhaps does the analytic 
power of Mr. Ruskin come into more frequent conflict 
with the temperamental emotional faculty than in the 
interpretation of history. Carlyle was so ridden by j 
his hero-worship as to pardon almost anything, almost i 
hypocrisy itself, to the forceful man of destiny, admitting ! 
Mohammed, Napoleon, and Frederick to the front rank 
of heroism. Mr. Ruskin's hero-worship is more con- 
sciously ideal : when he confronts the great men of his- j 
tory at close quarters he has an uncommonly shrewd eye 
for their defects. From Carlyle he had learned not only 
1 Fors, Letter x. (i. 190). 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 205 

kingship, but theocracy, the doctrine of divine rights of 
monarchs. But when he generalised from history in 
a calmer mood he does not find either kings or priests 
after his heart. " You find kings and priests alike, 
always inventing expedients to get money ; you find 
kings and priests alike, always inventing expedients to 
get power." l Yet, in spite of this, Mr. Ruskin is always 
harking back to an ideal government in which clergy 
and civil officers shall unite to rule, each supporting 
and correcting the other, " the clergy hallowing all 
worldly policy by their influence, and the magistracy 
repressing all religious enthusiasm by their practical 
wisdom." 2 Sometimes in earlier writings he seems 
to leave it doubtful whether the monarchical supreme 
power is to be one man or several, a king or a ruling 
oligarchy, 3 but in later years he steadily supports the 
" one man power." 

§ 6. Such a conception of history and of government 
brought him into necessary collision with modern liberal 
democracy, with its formula of " natural equality," and 
drove him, as it drove Carlyle, into frequent assertions 
of an opposite doctrine of " natural slavery." He was 
not, however, carried into the preposterous pose of a 
defender of negro " slavery " in the common meaning 
of that term. 4 Indeed, if we take the various proposals 
of reform, we perceive that not a few are directly de- 
signed to give economic equality, as, for instance, the 
limitation in holding of land, the maximum limit upon 
incomes suggested in " Time and Tide," 5 and the care- 

1 The Eagle's Nest, § 216. 2 The Old Koad, ii., § 219. 

3 " On the Construction of Sheepfolds " (Old Eoad, ii., § 217.) 

4 Time and Tide, § 149. 5 Letter ii. 



206 JOHN BUSKIN. 

fully devised schemes for levelling up education for 
all citizens. There is indeed reason to hold that Mr. 
Ruskin is much nearer to the more enlightened Liberals 
of his day and ours than he is willing to admit. The 
overbearing influence of Carlyle upon his politics is 
chiefly confined to the acceptance of a common ter- 
minology, and somewhat vague but violent attacks upon 
the revolutionary formula of the eighteenth century. 
With Carlyle he jeers at Parliament as an idle " talking- { 
shop," and occasionally warns working men not to trust 
to it for reforms ; 1 but after all his only definite sugges- 
tion for getting good government is by suffrage of the 
body of citizens. He does not even object to universal 
suffrage, provided it does not imply equality of voting 
power: age, property, experience, and intellect should 
all be taken into account, and political power bestowed 
according to fitness. 2 Against no representative of radi- 
calism does he fulminate so fiercely as against J. S. Mill. 
Yet Mill's scheme of an education test for the franchise 
stands upon the same principle as Mr. Ruskin' s. Mill ' 
makes provision for the control of legislation by an 
intellectual aristocracy, and is as earnestly concerned 
as he to get the men of intellect at the top of affairs, j 
Not merely in political but in economic reform the 
Mill of later years approximates more and more to ! 
Mr. Ruskin's views, substituting equality of opportunity 
for absolute equality. Even when Mr. Ruskin was 
writing his fiercest tirades against Liberalism, it is prob- 
able that the majority of Englishmen who owned that > 
name cherished no such ideals of Liberty or Equality 
as those with which they were accredited. The empty 
1 E. g. Time and Tide (Preface). 2 Munera Pulveris, § 129. 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 207 

liberty of laissezfaire was never more than the theoretic 
ideal of a small clique of economists and politicians, 
and the socialistic criticism of economic liberty had 
carried not only Mill, but a large section of the " radi- 
cals," away from the position of the French Revolution 
to a more positive conception of a social order. Mr. 
Ruskin himself seems hardly to recognise how far 
his historic and economic criticism had removed him 
from Carlyle. The latter's scorn for political economy 
had hidden from his eyes certain deep truths which 
Mr. Ruskin had unearthed. Carlyle had indeed cer- 
tain intuitive glimpses of the economic power which 
the governing classes abused for their private enjoy- 
ment : his healthy respect for work led him to condemn 
idleness, history taught him the demoralizing effects of 
luxury, and so he came to suspect the power of the 
landowner and the rich commercial class. But he 
never dived into the intricacies of the connection be- 
tween politics and industry as Mr. Ruskin did. 

Mr. Ruskin was able to recognise that those very 
defects of irreverence and distrust of authority, which 
were the seats of moral and social disorder, were in 
large measure the results of economic causes, arising 
from the abuse of government by the governing classes. 
No writer of the age, except Mazzini, had so power- 
fully and clearly traced the common root of the social 
problem. Mazzini, strangely slighted by Mr. Ruskin, 
had laid his finger upon the very same defects in the 
old revolutionary formulae which Mr. Ruskin had noted ; 
but, instead of formally renouncing liberty and equality, 
he strove more wisely to impart a fuller and more posi- 
tive context to the former, and to lay a moral basis of 



208 JOHN BUSKIN. 

brotherhood for the latter. Both saw that economic 
injustice was the soil from which sprung the vices of 
political systems ; both diagnosed that injustice in the 
same way, though Mr. Ruskin far more completely and 
acutely. But while Mazzini concluded that the needed 
reform was that the people should control their eco- 
nomic as well as their political government, and must fit 
themselves for doing so, Mr. Ruskin always denied the 
possibility of popular government either in politics or 
industry. And yet he saw even more clearly than 
Mazzini the general law of this economic injustice 
operative through history. 

" The people have begun to suspect that one par- 
ticular form of their past misgovernment has been that 
their masters have set them to do all the work and have 
themselves taken all the wages. In a word, that what 
was called governing them meant only wearing fine 
clothes and living on good fare at their expense. And, 
I am sorry to say, the people are quite right in this 
opinion, too. If you inquire into the vital fact of the 
matter, this you will find to be the constant structure 
of European society for the thousand years of the feudal 
system ; it was divided into peasants who lived by dig- 
ging, priests who lived by begging, and knights who 
lived by pillaging ; and as the luminous public mind 
becomes fully cognisant of these facts, it will assuredly 
not suffer things to be altogether arranged that way any 
more." 1 

When he thus closely realises the terrible defects 
of aristocracy in actual history, and particularly in con- 
templating the failure of the English upper classes to 
1 Crown of Wild Olive, § 136. 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 209 

fulfil their duties of right government, Mr. Ruskin seems 
at times to understand and even to justify democratic 
movements. To this temper must be referred his occa- 
sional suggestions of reformed electoral machinery, his 
prophetic announcement to the working-classes of " the 
natural issue of the transference of power out of the 
hands of the upper classes, so called, into yours." 1 In 
looking at current events, he seems to recognise the 
inevitability of the democratic movement; and yet his 
wider survey of history and his theory of human nature 
oblige him to condemn the experiment of popular gov- 
ernment, to turn his back upon the trend of recent 
history, which he so vividly describes in passages such 
as that which we have quoted, and to stake everything 
upon the miraculous reversal of modern movements by 
a voluntary self -reformation of the governing classes. 

i§ 7. In spite of wavering moments, this deep-rooted 
disbelief in democracy and a persistent disparagement 
of popular action stand as distinctive marks of Mr. 
Ruskin's teaching. The people cannot help themselves ; 
the growing discontent with their condition, aroused 
by education, can never become the power for progress 
which their friends and flatterers pretend. The domi- 
nation of the masses, either by this or by other means, 
is not really feasible, for " slavery," that is to say, 
unqualified and unquestioning submission to a superior 
will, is " an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a 
large portion of the human race, — to whom the more 
you give them of their own free will, the more slaves 
they will make themselves."^ The true instrument of 

1 Fors, Letter lxxxix. (iv. 361) ; cf. Letter lxxxix. (iv. 372). 

2 Munera Pulveris, § 133. 



210 JOHN BUSKIN. 

social progress, as he conceives it, is the good-will and ! 
intelligence of the upper classes, the landowners and 
" captains of industry," whose functions have been 
already named, "to keep order among their inferiors, 
and raise them always to the nearest level with 
themselves of which those inferiors are capable." 1 
This "raising" of "inferiors" may be safely car- 
ried on without risk of attaining any dangerous con- 
dition of equality, on account of " the wholesome I 
indisposition of the average mind for intellectual 
labour." 2 

§ 8. Although he has sketched elaborate plans of 
political and industrial organisation, Mr. Ruskin is no 
true believer in public machinery, even when the work- 
ing is in the hands of the illuminated " upper classes." 
Like most thinkers who have approached the social 
question from a distinctively " moral " standpoint, he 
finds the spring of progress in the individual will. 
"All effectual advancement towards this true felicity 
of the human race must be by individual, not public 
effort. Certain general measures may aid, certain re- 
vised laws guide, such advancement; but the measure 
and the law which have first to be determined are those; 
of each man's home." 3 

In a word, the Socialism, to which Mr. Ruskin looks, 
is to be imposed by an hereditary aristocracy, whose 
effective co-operation for the common good is to be 
derived from the voluntary action of individual land- 
owners and employers. There must be no movement 
of the masses to claim economic justice ; no use of Par- 

1 Time and Tide, § 139. 2 Fors, Letter xe_v. (iv. 465). 
3 Unto this Last, p. 169. 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 211 

liament to " nationalise " land or capital, or to attack 
any private interest. 

Reform must proceed from a moral appeal to the 
heart and the intelligence of individual members of the 
ruling classes, who, according to Mr. Ruskin's diagnosis, 
are now living idly or wastefully upon the labour of the 
people. They must be invited to reflect upon the obli- 
gations which attach to their position of authority ; a 
new heart must be put into them, that they may recog- 
nise the duty they owe to their inferiors, and, instead 
of using their economic and social power to suck the 
greatest advantage for themselves, may turn again to a 
right recognition of the principle, "noblesse oblige" and, 
as true " princes," furnish " initiative ; " as true dukes, 
" leading ; " as " bishops," oversee the lives of the peo- 
ple ; as " lords " of agriculture, order the food supply ; 
as " captains of industry," marshal the manufacturing 
forces of the people for the satisfaction of the common 
needs of all. 

This conviction that genuine progress can only be 
attained by " the moralisation of the employing and 
ruling classes" is not by any means a novel doctrine. 
On the contrary, it is ever the typical attitude of a large 
section of the educated classes, who distrust the capacity 
of the people for self-government, and fear violent at- 
tacks upon existing social institutions. The leaders of 
the Comptist movement, closely following the same trend 
of thought, imposed upon their ideal society an aristoc- 
racy with similar temporal and spiritual powers to those 
which Mr. Ruskin assigns to his upper classes, and Mr. 
Frederic Harrison looks to the same free moral action 
of employers for the chief solution of the " labour prob- 



212 JOHN BUSKIN. 

lem." I name this body not for its numbers and direct 
influence, which are small, but because they aptly illus- 
trate a natural attitude of persons of superior mind who 
bring moral reflection to bear upon social reform. This 
same position is adopted by the Charity Organisation 
Society, so far as it has any social philosophy. If indi- 
vidual employers and workers could be induced to mor- 
alise their lives, there would be no need of state action 
or of any heroic remedy for social maladies. Whenever 
religious or reflective persons of the well-to-do classes 
approach the social question in some of its protean 
aspects, they are generally driven to adopt this moral 
individualism of Mr. Ruskin, though they are far from 
accepting his searching analyses of commerce and of the 
economic bases of class life. Such people think that 
employers ought to be more " considerate " to their 
employees ; that landlords should seek to establish 
something of the old " feudal " status in dealing with 
their tenants, only exacting "fair" rents; "consumers" 
should recognise a responsibility in the purchase of 
sweated goods ; and rich people in general should admit 
the moral principle that " riches are a trust," and that 
they are bound to administer this trust with some regard 
to improving the condition of the poor by thoughtful and 
personally conducted schemes of charity. 

The chief recommendation, indeed the secret driving 
motive of this attitude and policy, is that by throwing all 
the moral onus upon use of riches it evades all questions 
of their origin. Now, Mr. Ruskin has by no means 
shunned this scrutiny of origin. His economic analy- 
sis has shown that the economic powers of landowner 
and capitalist stand on an unsound moral basis, being 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 213 

derived largely from oppressive bargains. Even while 
he is engaged in working out his "new feudalism," with 
its enlightened aristocracy, as often as the question con- 
fronts him, he insists that beneficial expenditure does 
not exculpate the rich man who has made his gains 
wrongfully. 1 Indeed, as we have seen, his reformed 
society deprives the landowner of his rack-rent power 
and makes him a state land-agent, while the employer 
in his ultimate development will govern industry for use 
and not for profit. 

Yet Mr. Ruskin, in common with these milder reform- 
ers, looks for his reform force to the voluntary good-will 
of those very rulers whose financial and social power is, 
according to his analysis, derived from extortion, and 
whose characters have been corrupted by abuse of their 
wrongful takings. 

§ 9. There are, in fact, two fatal obstacles to the 
efficacy of Mr. Ruskin' s policy of trusting reform to 
the initiative of the upper classes. 

In the first place, history proves it to be impossible 
so to convince the intellect and touch the hearts of any 
large proportion of the owners of political or economic 
power, that they will make a voluntary surrender of 
that power, or will divert its use from a selfish chan- 
nel to the public good. Mr. Ruskin proposes to divert 
strongly established " vested interests " from private to 
public uses, by persuasion of their owners. He some- 
times represents it as a simple task : " If we once can 
get a sufficient quantity of honesty in our captains the 
organisation of labour is easy." 2 But in reality two 
formidable barriers block the way. In the first place, 
1 Fors, Letter lx. (iii. 214). 2 jjnto this Last, Pref. xv. 



214 JOHN BUSKIN. 

he must convince these " captains " that their present 
conduct is " dishonest." At present, the vast majority 
of them are satisfied that, in taking all the rent, profits, 
and other emoluments they can get, and in spending 
them for their private purposes, they are strictly " within 
their rights." Now, supposing Mr. Ruskin's diagnosis 
of the present industrial system of competition and pro- 
duction for profit to be absolutely correct, is it possible 
to induce the " captains " to perceive and to admit its 
correctness ? Any one who has ever tried to persuade 
another of the wrongfulness of any conduct consecrated 
by long use and concealed within a vast network of com- 
plex action, will be convinced of the impracticability of 
this method of reform. The great majority of " captains 
of industry " are, and will remain, intellectually incapa- 
ble of following the economic analysis by which Mr. 
Ruskin or another may seek to convince their intellect : 
those who are capable of following it will refuse to do 
so, adopting some one of the many refuges or evasions 
which a man instinctively employs, when he is asked 
to arrive at an inconvenient judgment by long process of 
reasoning. In the next place, even were it possible to 
put the injustice of their present conduct plainly before 
our " captains," the generation of " honest " motives out 
of a mere intellectual conviction is by general admission 
extremely difficult : it is all the difference between see- 
ing the right and doing it, when the doing implies a 
complete abandonment of a customary and agreeable line 
of conduct. 

It is surely no cynicism to insist that the process of 
putting " honesty," not into exceptional members but 
into a sufficient proportion of the captains of industry 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 215 

to revolutionise the conduct of business, is utterly 
chimerical. Some appeal to humanitarian sentiment 
is possible ; a widespread conviction that good wages 
and conditions of labour should prevail wherever " the 
trade will bear it," is quite practicable ; benevolent 
employers here and there may be willing to com- 
promise the present profit-seeking business by admit- 
ting employees to some share of " profits." But such 
reversal of the whole spirit of industry as is required by 
Mr. Ruskin cannot be effected by arguments or moral 
appeals addressed to the body of employers. 

§ 10. Moreover, supposing that individual employers 

I were open to " conviction of sin " and to the adoption of 
the new principle of " industry for use," this method 

! of reform would still be futile. The antithesis which 
is drawn in the Preface of " Unto this Last " between 
" individual " and " public effort " is ruinously false. It 
is perfectly true that every social reform requires that 
the individual members of that society shall accept and 
respond to a moral appeal : it is perfectly false that they 
can by moral action in their individual capacity apply a 
social remedy. The separate action of individuals can 
never attain a social end, simply because they are ex 
hypothesi not acting as members of society. Social evils 
require social remedies. A social remedy indeed need 
not in all, or even in most cases, imply public action 
in the sense of a recourse to political machinery. But 
organic co-operation is essential : the general will must 
be the instrument of actual reform, though the first 
appeal may be to the intelligence and will of in- 
dividuals. 

§ 11. That this is no empty quibbling will easily 



216 JOHN BUSKIN. 

appear if one considers the operation of such industrial I 
reform as Mr. Ruskin seeks to obtain by the individual 
initiative of " captains of industry." Here is a trade in 
which large manufacturers are closely competing with 
one another : they are paying the lowest wages to their 
labourers for the longest working-day, and are selling, | 
at the lowest prices, the worst wares which the public j 
will consent to buy. This is a typical industrial prob- 
lem ; now find a remedy by individual moral action. Let : 
Mr. Ruskin approach a competitor in this trade, and try 
to induce him to gradually transform his business, pay- 
ing decent wages, refusing to take dividends, and putting 
sound wares upon the market. Suppose the manufac- 
turer to be intellectually convinced and thoroughly 
desirous to mend his ways, he will, nevertheless, be 
forced to reply: "I cannot raise my wages without 
raising my prices; I cannot raise my prices without 
losing my trade, closing my mills, and turning my 
employees out of work; I cannot knock off the divi- 
dends because my business depends on borrowed capital, 
and such capital cannot be obtained without payment of 
dividend ; I cannot improve my quality of wares because 
it would cost more to improve them, and the consumer 
would not consent to pay the higher price for the better 
article." No arguments to show the efficiency of " high 
wages" or the advantages of educating the consumer's 
taste are valid in such a case, for we are bound to 
assume that the intelligent self-interest of employers 
in this trade is convinced that it would not " pay " to 
give higher wages or to produce better wares. There is 
no means by which the individual desire for reform on 
the part of our manufacturer can express itself in his 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 217 

conduct. It may indeed be said that he can do " some- 
thing " to raise the condition of labour, and the quality 
of wares ; but he cannot do much, for he is bound to con- 
form pretty closely to the general custom of the trade, 
on penalty of losing his share of it. Where competition 
does not press so closely, or where some monopoly or 
special advantage of market is possessed, the power of 
the individual manufacturer is, of course, correspond- 
ingly enlarged. It is possible for the American trust, 
or the water and gas companies in English towns, to 
moralise their business policy to a considerable extent. 
But this process of conversion implies a wholesale 
conversion of shareholders, which it is not possible 
to compass. To endeavour to reform the structure 
of business by moralising individual employers implies 
a failure to grasp the physiology of industry. The 
" moral " conduct of a converted individual, so far 
from gradually leavening the lump, would not even 
enable him to hold his own in the business world : if 
he were a capitalist-employer in ordinary business, his 
trade would pass away from him and he would be left 
stranded and impotent; if he were a shareholder, he 
could only rid himself of personal responsibility of 
profit-mongering by handing his shares to some less 
scrupulous person. It is worse than useless for well- 
meaning people, unskilled in the business world, to 
deceive themselves. Here and there an individual, of 
exceptional business endowments and trade advantages, 
may materially abate the pressure of competition upon 
his employees, and may exercise a wholesome pride in 
selling sound articles at reasonable prices. But even 
such a one cannot throw off the profit-making system 



218 JOHN BUSKIN. 

completely, still less can he furnish an example which 
other employers, less favourably placed, can imitate. In 
ordinary competitive trade, the man who refuses to play 
the game according to the rules, must simply retire and 
let another take his place. The honest example of a 
morally enlightened individual has not that power of 
permeating industry which is required by the gospel 
of " moralising the employer." Honesty, beyond the 
meagre limits of legality and the demands of pur- 
chasers, not merely is not the best policy, but is not 
a possible policy where the making of dividends is a 
condition of continuance in business. 

§ 12. Just as impracticable in the long run is the 
corresponding policy of individual reform applied at the 
other end of the industrial system, the moral education 
of the consumer. Something, doubtless, may be done 
by " white lists " and by Consumers' Leagues, having 
for their object the protection of purchasers from the 
encouragement of " sweating," by affording them some 
guarantee that the articles they buy have been produced 
under " fair conditions." But this " something " is infini- 
tesimally little. Those who, under this humanitarian 
impulse, buy goods when they would not otherwise have 
bought them, and who, in the nature of the case, pay 
prices higher than they would have paid, can have no 
really satisfactory guarantee that the innumerable proc- 
esses which contribute directly and indirectly to the 
production and distribution of most manufactured goods 
are conducted on fair conditions. It is practically im- 
possible to earmark goods so as to trace their industrial 
history from the condition of raw material to shop goods, 
or, conversely, to trace the different hands among which 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 219 

the price paid for the shop goods is distributed in the 
intricate course of modern commerce. The guarantee is 
practically confined to the final process, and, even then, 
any considerable extension of the method of the Con- 
; sumers' League would most likely be defeated by the 
' ability of the specialist producer or vendor to deceive 
I the amateur purchaser or his amateur adviser. In 
j general, the consumer is not competent to ascertain the 
! conditions of production and distribution of the many 
: articles he buys, nor can he succeed in acquiring such 
J competence; for, when it becomes necessary to outwit 
i him, he will always be outwitted by the superior oppor- 
tunities of a highly interested manufacturer or retailer. 
An unorganised or feebly organised method of attempt- 
ing to solve a social problem is both scientifically false 
and practically futile. 

§ 13. Mr. Ruskin's assumption that, because the will 
of individuals initiates all moral conduct, the solution of 
the social problem must proceed chiefly from individual, 
not from public action, is untenable. The education of 
the individual intelligence and moral sense is indeed one 
and the first essential ; but, unless it succeeds in stimu- 
lating him to public action in co-operation with his fel- 
lows, its influence is sterilised. Public action may, of 
course, take other forms than legislation and public 
administration ; it may operate through private organi- 
sations of business men or of citizens, the huge reticula- 
tion of voluntary societies which, in matters industrial, 
recreative, educational, and spiritual, have formed so 
distinguished a feature of our age and country ; or, tak- 
ing powerful and definite shape as public opinion, it may 
! grow into customs as strong and as coercive as any law. 



220 JOHN BUSKIN. 

But there is increasing reason to believe that the inch- [ 
vidual units of moral force, which are to turn industry [ 
from private profit-seeking into public use, will be com- 
pelled to organise themselves into a " general will," and ;1 
to find expression through the most definite and con- 
crete instruments of social government, the political and 
administrative machinery of the state. The reason for f 
this expectation is not that the use of this more or less 
clumsy machinery is in itself preferable to that of the 
more flexible and less mechanical forms, in which the 
moral will of a people may make for conduct ; but that 
our analysis of the industrial problem shows that the 
more rigorous coercive treatment is essential to break ' 
down the evil power which competitive industry for 
profit places in the hands of the least scrupulous com- \ 
petitors. The conversion of the best, or even of the 
average industrial competitor, is not enough ; we must 
needs restrain the worst, and such restraint requires and 
justifies coercion and the application of the most effective 
general machinery of coercion. Such public action, how- 
ever, is not less moral in its origin and its supports than \ 
the so-called individual conduct. The education of the 
will of individual citizens is essential to its employment ; 
for public opinion alone can pass a law or secure its 
effective administration when it is passed. The too | ! 
common notion, that legislation replaces and dispenses 
with the need of other more elastic voluntary forms of [ 
co-operation, is unsound ; the advocates of state action 
are not the enemies of private reform agencies, but the I 1 
friends. More and more, as citizens learn to conduct : 
public affairs for the public good, it will be recognised 
that the best use of private organisations and even of f 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 221 



; individual activity for the general good is to educate in- 
dividuals for the performance of civic duties, to watch 
i and to assist the administration of public functions, and 
! to perform those public services which, by reason of 
I their delicacy and the local individuality of their char- 
i actcr, cannot conveniently be trusted to the more routine 
i and mechanical agencies of government. 

§ 14. Mr. Ruskin's refusal to accept democracy, and 
his reliance on the voluntary conversion of the ruling 
classes, is a radical defect of his social thinking, and 
! ultimately rests, as all such errors must, upon a moral 
I obliquity. His diagnosis of the moral claims of democ- 
I racy is false. He looks upon it as a rebellion, instead 
of as a necessary development of the general will, a 
moral process of popular activity. The order which he 
so passionately desires cannot be reached by the moral 
means he advocates. It can only arise as the expression 
of the enlightened, rational, free will of the people. 
Socialism, either that of Mr. Ruskin or another, how- 
ever far it goes, must either mean industrial democracy 
or nothing. A so-called Socialism from above, embody- 
ing the patronage of emperor or of a small enlightened 
bureaucracy, is not Socialism in any moral sense at all ; 
the forms of government must be animated by the social 
spirit, must be the expression of the common organic 
genius of the people, if it is to have true vitality and 
meaning. Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin, with many others, 
declare democracy impossible, because such a spirit can- 
not emanate from the rude people. If this is true, then 
moral government is impossible. Mr. Ruskin is misled 
in his notions of democracy by assigning undue stress 
and validity to certain emphatic phrases which crude 



222 JOHN BUSKIN. 

revolutionary experiments evoke. Democracy, as he 
would see it, is the assertion of absolute equality, and 
the negation of all reverence. This in effect constitutes 
his moral indictment. It is true that there have been 
and still are advocates of democracy against whom these 
charges hold good. But neither of them applies to the, 
more rational modern conception of a democracy with 
representative institutions. Irreverence is not essential 
to the democrat, as Mr. Ruskin insists. It is, indeed, 
true that the canine fidelity, the absolute servility, and 
unintelligent obedience which Mr. Ruskin not uncom- 
monly requires, is utterly alien from the spirit of democ- 
racy. But it is also alien from morality, which, in 
order to deserve its name, must be a " perfect freedom," 
a voluntary, rational service. It is the curious survival 
of an ascetic feeling of self-renunciation in conjunction 
with an admiration of those " strange ideas " of autoc- 
racy, which here obfuscates the clear moral vision of 
Mr. Ruskin. The reverence of one who understands, 
though he may not possess, the superior qualities 
of one set in authority over him, is something better 
than mere canine worship. This reverence, this en- 
lightened appreciation of the character of others, is 
not inconsistent with democracy ; it is, we must insist, 
the necessary moral support of it, and the education 
of rational democracy is vital and effective just in so 
far as it is calculated to evoke and sustain this senti- 
ment. 

§ 15. Neither does democracy stand or fall by any 
declaration of absolute equality. Mr. Ruskin' s criticism 
of the notion that " all men are by nature free and 
equal " is valid, for as soon as this quality is expressed 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 223 

in closer concrete form, it is discovered not to conform 
to facts. Not only are men not in present fact equal, 
but there is no reason to suppose that they ever will be 
equal in nature and capacities. But the phrase has, for 
all that, served a sound historic purpose as a dramatic 
protest against inequalities bred not of nature but of 
human oppression. There is also a sense in which it 
expresses an important truth. In the eyes of society 
and of the state, all citizens are presumed to be of equal 
value, so far as the consideration of the public and the 
bestowal of public benefits are concerned ; it is convenient 
to attach an equal sanctity to their lives and property, 
not that ultimately and accurately any two members 
are of equal value to society and equally deserving of 
social consideration, but because the inherent difficul- 
ties attending human valuation and the necessary imper- 
fections of public machinery are such that, for most 
purposes at any rate, it will be socially expedient to 
uphold and practise this maxim of equality, excepting 
where explicit experience has testified the contrary, as 
in the case of criminals or other proved anti-social per- 
sons. But outside this limited application of the doc- 
trine, modern democracy does not make any demand 
based upon a false assertion of natural or moral facts. 
Equality of opportunity for social service and for self- 
development is the only equality which is demanded. 
How far this implies an absolutely equal access to 
natural resources, to education, and to other social 
opportunities, may be matter for discussion. Democ- 
racy does undoubtedly reject Mr. Ruskin's system of 
hereditary castes ; but its rejection would not be based 
upon an abstract assertion of equality, but upon histori- 



224 JOHN RUSEIN. 

cal facts and scientific interpretations of heredity, which 
would be taken to refute the practicability and social 
utility of such a system. 

§ 16. Whether, how far, or how fast a democracy can 
be established, based upon rational reverence for real 
and proved capacity, and therefore endowed with neces- 
sary checks upon the abuse of governmental powers in 
politics or industry, and directed to secure for all its 
members equal opportunities of consciously contributing 
to the ends of the commonwealth, will be questions upon 
which no close agreement may at present be expected. 
Believers in the possibility of democracy do indeed re- 
ject Mr. Ruskin's contemptuous estimate of the capaci- 
ties of " the common people," insisting that the common 
rational faculties possessed by all, and the common ex- 
perience of life, enable " the masses " to attain a practi- 
cal wisdom which is of essential service in the work of 
government. Not merely by furnishing a check upon 
those abuses of power which always attend class govern- 
ment, but by a direct important contribution to the 
knowledge of social needs and of the wisest means of 
satisfaction, must the voice of the people claim to con- 
tribute to government. The organic conception of soci- 
ety, which Mr. Ruskin accepts, demands a self-gov- 
ernment in which the whole of the self, the organic 
experience and judgment of the whole rational system, 
shall find direct conscious expression, a demand which is 
entirely inconsistent with the dumb submission which 
his ideal government would seem to impose upon the 
masses. 

The whole notion that social government is to be 
specialised like medicine or shoemaking, in the hands of 



SOCIALISM AND ARISTOCRACY. 225 

a particular class, involves a complete misconception 
of the problem, confounding the expert drafting of 
laws and administration, which are special arts, with 
the wider rational ordering of social life to which the 
entire organic society must contribute. The comparison 
of the wisdom and ability of various classes, and of indi- 
viduals within these classes, as a basis for the quantita- 
tive apportionment of governmental powers, is only one 
of the many fallacies which lurk in a sectional or sep- 
aratist solution of an organic problem. The wisdom of 
j a nation for purposes of self-government cannot be un- 
i derstood as the mere addition of the wisdom of its sepa- 
I rate units. The real plea for democracy is the absolute 
need for the expression of the rational life of the whole 
'national organism in the arts of government. Neither 
the equal right of all individual members, nor the un- 
equal capacities of separate classes measured by educa- 
tion or by property, forms the true basis of rational 
self-government. Through the necessarily rude and im- 
perfect mechanism of franchise and elections must 
breathe the conscious organic experience of national 
life, expressed in large general judgments and demands 
which are really the will and voice of the people as a 
unity, and which only appear to be the added judgments 
and demands of a number of separate individuals, be- 
cause of the necessary defects of the mechanical instru- 
ments of record. Democracy insists that the people as 
a whole is rational, and that government must express 
this rationality. This does not exclude but implies a 
recognition of the need of making full use of the capaci- 
ties of skilled men for special governmental functions, 
| and of assigning to these the requisite authority as lead- 

i 
i 
i 



226 JOHN BUSKIN. 

ers both in the education and in the execution of the 
national will. Mr. Ruskin's criticism of democracy 
glances scatheless from the strong formula of Mazzini, 
" The progress of all through all, under the leadership 
of the best and wisest." 



CHAPTER IX. 

MACHINERY AND INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 

§ 1. Mr. Ruskin's discriminative attitude towards machines. § 2. 
Sentimentalism in revival of hand industry. § 3. The mechan- 
isation of life and work by modern industry. § 4. The indict- 
ment of over-specialisation. § 5. The need of physical labour 
for all. § 6. The problem of mechanical and unskilled manual 
work. § 7. The true interests of consumers. § 8. Condem- 
nation of the machine-made town. § 9. The decay and the 
revival of rural life. 

§ 1. So strong is the popular bent to caricature that 
it is safe to conclude that the most general of all notions 
about Mr. Ruskin is that he is a fanatical opponent of 
machinery, a literary Luddite and railway wrecker, the 
insanity of such an attitude being in part condoned by 
the reflection that he is an artist, and therefore incapa- 
ble of taking a sound practical view of the benefits which 
factories and coal-pits have conferred upon our national 
life. 

Now, since certain " objections to machinery " are no 
by-product of Mr. Ruskin's thought, but belong to the 
very kernel of his criticism of life, they deserve closer 
attention than the " average sensual man " is inclined to 
accord them. 

In order to clear the way, we must first ask, How far 
does Mr. Ruskin object to machinery ? Quaint stories 
of his " posting " up north in 1876 " quite in the old- 

227 



228 JOHN BUSKIN. 

fashioned way," with a specially built carriage, postil- 
lion, and relays of horses, in order to escape the rail- 
way ; l attempts to restore hand-weaving in Cumberland ; 
his reversion to hand-made paper and handicraft of 
every kind in the production of his books ; his constant 
and vehement denunciation of factory towns and factory 
life, have created an impression of a quixotic, indiscrim- 
inate opposition to modern industrial methods. With 
just reason, Mr. Ruskin complains 2 of the ignorance of 
critics who, trusting to vulgar gossip, accuse him of 
" condemning machinery," whereas he is himself the 
inventor and proposer of daring schemes for tide-mills, 
drainage, and other engineering exploits. Two impor- 
tant distinctions mark his real attitude. His opposition 
is directed primarily not against machinery, but against 
" steam-power " superseding not only human power, but 
the " natural " agencies of wind, water, and animal life. 3 
The causes of his hatred of steam-power are manifold : 
the horror and the brutalising toil of mining, the foul 
impurity of a smoke-laden atmosphere, the ugly struc- 
ture and degrading monotony of factories and factory 
towns, the devastation of beautiful localities by mines 
and mills, by railways and hordes of barbarian " trip- 
pers," the absorption of so much national energy and 
skill in economy of steam-production, — all contribute to 
his abhorrence. 

His attitude may seem unreasonable : it may be 
urged that " steam," too, is a power of nature ; that 
mining need not be, and indeed is not, a peculiarly 
unhealthy or degrading work ; that much of the injuri- 

1 Collingwood, " Life," ii. 162. 2 Fors, Letter lxxxv. (iv. 290). 
3 Fors, Letter lxvii. (iii. 373). 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 229 

ous effect of smoke is preventable ; that factories need 
not be either ugly or unhealthy, and are becoming less 
so ; that steam-power, as the servant of humanity, confers 
enormous benefits in facilitating the production of mate- 
rial wealth and in widening the horizon of life for all 
people, by providing easy and swift communication of 
persons, goods, and ideas. Many of these pleas, in part, 
at any rate, Mr. Ruskin's mind was open to receive. 
Even railways he did not utterly eschew. For although 
in the opening letter of "Fors" he expresses a fierce 
desire " to destroy most of the railroads in England, and 
all the railroads in Wales," 1 in milder moments he draws 
a distinction between main lines — which for their large 
and obvious utility he would permit — and certain branch 
lines, whose smaller utility is far outweighed by their in- 
jury to nature and to rural life. In particular, and with 
sound reason, he opposed the introduction of railways 
into the finest valleys of Switzerland and into the heart 
of our own Lake Country, because he held that their 
presence destroyed the beauty which was the distinctive 
worth of these places. Those who think this exhibits 
an exclusive spirit, and consider that a Eigi railway, by 
making the glories of Switzerland accessible to larger 
numbers of people, confers a benefit so large as to out- 
weigh the damage to scenery, fail to appreciate the 
sensitive genius to which wilfully-flawed beauty is a 
desecration and a source of keener pain than the pres- 
ence of any ordinary ugliness or lack of harmony. All 
utilitarian calculations of the quantity of lower satisfac- 
tion afforded to a larger number necessarily failed to 
touch and to convince one who always held that the best 
iFors, Letter i. (i. 5). 



230 JOIIN BUSKIN. 

is infinitely better than the next best. Mr. Ruskin's 
objections to the degradation of what is greatest and 
most beautiful in nature are neither perverse nor weakly 
" sentimental " to those who value quality of life. 

§ 2. There are, however, cases where there is some 
reason to accuse him of being unduly swayed by " senti- 
mental " considerations. Hand-weaving is one example. 
Where fine and skilful work is required, the hand-loom 
is most desirable and in large measure necessary, but 
neither the materials nor the inherent processes of weav- 
ing justify the prohibition of steam-driven machinery for 
the common sorts of cloths. Every one acquainted with 
the true history of hand-weaving in the olden times, or 
who watches the industry as it survives to-day in less 
advanced places, knows that in general it preserves 
hardly any of the character of fine manual labour: 
it is a dull, monotonous, routine work, wearing to 
muscles and to nerves, with scarcely any interest or 
scope for skill and originality ; moreover, the economic 
circumstances of its survival as a home-industry favour 
excessive work and under-pay. If any one is disposed 
to doubt this, let him visit some of the chalets in Swiss 
valleys, where enterprising Berne manufacturers are re- 
introducing common sorts of silk-weaving. It is doubt- 
less claimed that hand-woven goods are best in quality 
for wear, but to desire always the best goods at any cost 
of labour is undesirable : for ordinary purposes ordinary 
wares suffice, and steam-driven machinery both can and 
should produce them. A certain fallacy of mediaeval 
picturesqueness has sometimes carried Mr. Ruskin, with 
Carlyle and other good company, into extravagant work 
of " restoration." To this same " sentimentalism," or 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 231 

falsely grounded sentiment, we must attribute the indis- 
criminate denial of machinery to agriculture. 1 If Mr. 
Ruskin had enjoyed personal experience of agricultural 
work, he would have known that much labour, quite as 
heavy, dull, and brutalising in its effect upon the nature 
of the labourer as the work in mines and iron-works 
which he so earnestly deplored, has been taken from 
agricultural workers and put upon the tireless back of 
the steam-driven machine-plough, reaper, thresher, 
digger, etc., and that the net result of this new agri- 
' culture is to lighten labour, and to leave to labourers 
| a larger margin of free energy for their leisure time. 
But though Mr. Ruskin is undoubtedly carried too far 
in his protests against the encroachments of machinery 
in industry, we are not at liberty to neglect what is true 
in his indictment. Perhaps the following passage from 
" Fors " gives the best conspectus of his whole position : 
1 " The use of machinery in agriculture throws a certain 
number of persons out of wholesome employment, who 
must thenceforth either do nothing, or mischief. The 
use of machinery in art destroys the national intellect ; 
and, finally, renders all luxury impossible. All machin- 
ery needful in ordinary life to supplement human or 
animal labour may be moved by wind or water ; while 
steam, or any modes of heat power, may only be employed 
justifiably under extreme or special conditions of need, 
as for speed on main lines of communication and for 
raising water from great depths, or other such work 
beyond human strength." 2 

§ 3. What is really interesting and important is Mr. 

1 Crown of Wild Olive, § 157 ; Time and Tide, § 152. 

2 Fors, Letter lxvii. (iii. 374) ; cf. Letter xliv. (ii. 413). 



232 JOHN RUSKIN. 

Ruskin' s general protest against the mechanisation of j 
work and life. The tendency of machinery, as he sees ! 
it, is to subdivide labour so that no one any longer shall i 
make anything, shall see the end or utility of his labour, I 
or shall even complete a single process. Subdivision 
of labour really subdivides the man, makes him less than 
a man, — a mere servant or a machine in one narrow j 
routine process. Not merely does it degrade him by | 
narrowing the scope of the work, but the skill, freedom, | 
and control of the workman is gone, and he becomes a I 
mere machine-tender. This is a mortal injury : it ' 
denotes the difference between a man who uses a tool : 
and a tool that uses a man. Now, according to Mr. 
Ruskin, a prime need of humanity is the performance of 
skilled manual work. Purely mechanical work " invari- 
ably degrades," 2 and the thought that it is necessary is 
an ever-haunting trouble to Mr. Ruskin, who does not ade- 
quately realise that it is the chief function of machinery 
to solve his difficulty, and that mechanical work is from 
its very nature the only work a machine can do. 

The universal need of good and interesting work is a 
first principle of the art of life according to Mr. Ruskin, 
and machinery, in so far as it enslaves the worker, im- ; 
pugns this principle. Like many others, he seems often to j 
assume that machinery will gradually convert a larger j 
and larger proportion of workers into machine-tenders. ! 
There is no evidence that this is so. The most highly 
developed manufacturing machinery — e. g. a modern 
flour-mill — requires the smallest quantity of tending,; 
and such labour as it does require partakes of the nature 
of skilled engineering rather than of mechanical routine. 
1 Fors, Letter xliv. (ii. 413). 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 233 

The tendency to subdivision of labour which preceded 
modern machinery, though it has undoubtedly been in- 
tensified by machine processes, was a more warrantable 
source of distrust than machinery itself. It is by no 
means the case that manufacturing machinery is engag- 
ing the labour of an increasing proportion of our Eng- 
lish workers ; and though steam-transport by sea and 
land is a growing source of employment, most of the 
workers here are not under the direct governance of the 
machinery with which they co-operate. 

§ 4. But for Mr. Ruskin's broader charge against 
modern industry, of " mechanising " life by an excessive 
specialisation, which sacrifices the individuality of the 
man, by absorbing his productive energies in a single 
narrow routine process, there is ample warrant. Indus- 
trial economy, looking only to the increased production 
of goods and the consequent gain of the consumer, has 
ignored the vital needs of the producer. In this way 
" free " competition has enslaved the individual worker 
to society, by confining him to the constant repetition of 
some small single task, to which he must give all his 
time and energy in order to gain a livelihood, starving 
and wasting by atrophy all the other human faculties 
with which he was endowed by nature. Similarly, on a 
larger scale, " free trade," so far as it is determined by 
purely commercial considerations, narrows and enslaves 
the national productive life, insisting that whole districts 
of England shall be monotonised by cotton, iron, pottery, 
at the behest of a world-market. The protest which Mr. 
Ruskin, in common with Carlyle, Emerson, Arnold, 
Morris, and most of our wisest teachers, raises against 
this insane policy, is not, as sometimes represented, a 



234 JOHN BUSKIN. 

mad crusade against inevitable laws. These protestants 
do not refuse the gains of effective co-operation, which 
come by using the special qualities of men and nations ; 
they merely insist that the practice of dividing labour 
shall be moderated by a due consideration of the inter- 
ests of the producer, and that the consumer shall not 
ride roughshod over him. It is desirable that work 
shall be highly specialised, but not that the energy of the 
worker shall be monopolised by this specialised work. 
Hence the need of protecting labour against excessive 
hours of labour and the " driving " tendency of modern 
machine-production. The legitimate use of division of 
labour requires that a large margin of leisure and of 
energy be given to every worker for the free and 
healthy exercise and use of his other faculties. The 
farther division of labour is carried, the shorter should 
be the routine working day, the longer the time for 
other kinds of work and play. This is the " true inward- 
ness " of the agitation for shorter hours ; it is not a plea 
for idleness, but for the healthy use of unspecialised 
faculties. Such demand is based upon no merely " senti- 
mental " considerations or regard for a more pleasurable 
life, valid as these considerations are. It is a necessity 
of sound individual and national life. Over-specialisa- 
tion is the destruction of physical and intellectual life. 
True manhood requires some just apportionment of 
time and energy to the different departments of a 
human life : a man who digs all day, or thinks all day, 
or plays all day, is less than a man, for all these things 
are needed to complete humanity. 

§ 5. When, therefore, Mr. Ruskin indicts the idle 
wealthy class, he is actuated not merely by a sense of 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 235 

justice, but by a consideration of the wholesomeness of 
work. Ttie worst effect of division of labour falls upon 
those who are relieved from the necessity of labouring 
at all. " Whoever will not work neither shall he eat " 
is a physical as well as a moral law. Like other laws, 
it may be evaded : sport, the return of our aristocracy 
to the " hunting " stage of their barbarous ancestors, is 
a chief form of this evasion. But the attempt to eat 
and digest a dinner without previously deserving it by 
some voluntary output of physical " work " must, and 
in the long run does, defeat itself. Mr. Ruskin, fortified 
by moral considerations and directed by economic analy- 
sis, insists that some hand-labour is required of all. 1 
Not only should the idle classes earn the bread they eat 
by the skill of their hand and the sweat of their brow, 
but the intellectual classes require a physical counter- 
balance to their specialised brain- work. The extrava- 
I gances of modern sport are chief testimony to a wasteful 
economy, exhibiting an erratic, often a wantonly destruc- 
tive use of forces which, properly directed, might yield 
sound social service, without any diminution of the inter- 
est and enjoyment they afford to those who give them 
out. Mr. Ruskin' s attempt to introduce road-making as 
a pastime for Oxford undergraduates, though it failed to 
compete with the attractions of the river and the foot- 
ball field, was nevertheless a serviceable protest against 
abuse of recreation. Tolstoy has insisted that the work- 
ing day of every healthy man should contain some 
routine muscular work, some skilled exercise of eye and 
wrist, and some definitely intellectual work, and Mr. 
Ruskin would agree with him. Tolstoy, indeed, goes 
1 Crown of Wild Olive, § 151. 



236 JOHN BUSKIN. 

somewhat farther in his praise of agriculture than even 
Mr. Ruskin would be prepared to go, demanding appar- 
ently that " bread-labour " in the literal sense shall form I 
part of the regular work of every one, and thus imposing 
upon all alike the conditions of a rural life. But while 
Mr. Ruskin allows more division of labour than Tolstoy, j 
and does not insist that every one shall dig and plough, 
he does require physical work from all, and holds life in 
great industrial towns of the present type to be inconsist- 
ent alike with individual and national health. 

§ 6. On one point his teaching seems less " scientific " I 
than Tolstoy's, and not quite consistent with his prac- 
tical experiments. We have already seen 1 that he not i 
only regarded the " degrading " occupation of mining, i 
forging, etc., as essentially " servile," but included in 
this category all " simply manual occupations." This ! 
conviction that nature had provided an inferior grade of 
labourers, belonging essentially to the Helot class, who [ 
would be best adapted for such low work, and would 
suffer less from doing it than others, seemed to furnish 
him a moderately satisfactory solution for the question, 
" Who will do the hard and disagreeable work ? " This 
specialisation of human nature enabled him to reserve 
" the rough and hard work " for " the rough and hard 
people." 2 " It is in the wholesome indisposition of the \ 
average mind for intellectual labour that due provision 
is made for the quantity of dull work which must be 
done in stubbing the Thornaby wastes of the world." 3 

Apparently the manual work which he would impose 
upon all other classes is to be skilled work, not that 

1 Chapter VII. 2 Fors, Letter lxxxii. (iv. 208). 

3 Fors, Letter xcv. (iv. 464). 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 237 

mechanical work which " invariably degrades." x Here 
j Mr. Rusk in is surely wrong and Tolstoy in essence right. 
I Simple mechanical work, either of a muscular order, like 
digging, or lighter, like most mill labour, when done in 
; moderation, not only is not degrading in itself, but is 
positively useful as a part of the day's work. Both for 
| physical exercise and for moral discipline some inechan- 
I ical, routine, manual work is desirable. To put it all 
| upon a specialised grade of servile beings, which is Mr. 
Ruskin's proposal, would be a double wrong: first to 
these slaves by depriving them of their share of interest- 
ing and educative work, some of which is their due ; 
secondly, to the other classes, by over-stimulation of 
nervous and mental powers through lack of a wholesome 
admixture of routine-work. In an obiter dictum Mr. 
Ruskin declares there is no harm in a man " thinking all 
day if he can." There is a curiously defective grasp of 
humanity in such a statement. The direct reply is that 
a person who thinks all day will not think sanely, for he 
is not leading a sane life. Critics, like Tolstoy and 
Edward Carpenter, rightly insist that specialised intel- 
lectual castes of persons, who have absolutely thrown off 
all physical labour, are driven to justify their unnatural 
life by producing an abortive brood of study-bred the- 
ories and researches, artificial products of literature, 
science, philosophy, theology, and art, which are not 
truly sound or serviceable, because their makers are not 
in true contact with the common life. Whitman touches 
the quick of the matter, " Now I re-examine philosophies 
and religions. They may prove well in lecture-rooms 
and yet may not prove at all under the spacious 
1 Fors, Letter xliv. (ii. 413). 



238 JOHN BUSKIN. 

clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents." ' 
Theories of life spun by the over-wrought brains of 
those who are not living a whole life cannot them- 
selves be whole. It is only right to acknowledge that 
this too has been Mr. Ruskin's contention through all 
his teaching : no one has done more to expose theorising 
not based upon first hand knowledge of nature and 
human life, or to refute the exaggerated claims of 
academic sophisms. It is only in the failure to recog- 
nise the right place of mechanical labour in every life 
that Mr. Ruskin consistently errs. The specialisation of 
routine work which he sanctions is both a physical and 
a moral mistake. Due attention to the physiology of 
work indicates the need of routine manual exercise for 
all; the necessary mechanical work, divided amongst 
all, would be a gain to all instead of a wearisome and 
degrading toil to a single class. The industrial ordering 
which would be necessary to give to all their proper 
share of unskilled and skilled manual work doubtless 
involves grave difficulties ; but that the ideal of healthy ' 
individual life in a well-ordered society demands such 
apportionment, there can be no reasonable doubt. 

§ 7. But it is not merely in the direct interests of the 
producer that Mr. Ruskin and other artists have revolted 
against the dominance of machinery and the excessive 
division of labour. The commercial economists, sanc- 
tioned by " common sense," have assumed, without 
warrant, that the consumers gain by every increase 
of routine-made goods which implies the narrowing of 
the labour of the producers. This economic view takes 
a too quantitative and a too objective estimate of wealth. 
It is by no means sure that an increase of material 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 239 

goods of routine character is of service to consumers 
already provided with the necessaries of physical life. 
One who is no fanatical niachino-clast may well doubt 
whether the flooding of markets with vast quantities of 
low-class machine-made goods has been an unqualified 
gain to consumers. Let us bear in mind the necessary 
limits of machine-production. A machine can economic- 
ally function only when a large number of persons will 
consent to consume a large quantity of goods of pre- 
cisely the same size, shape, and general character, and 
without any of those " art " qualities which belong to 
the skill and finish of good individual workmanship. 
Now the general policy of replacing hand-made by 
machine-made goods may be, and in many cases is, 
entirely justified, but it is a bad education for the taste 
of the community. In a really progressive society, not 
only the interest of the producer in doing good work, 
but of the consumer in getting the result of good 
work, will impose restrictions upon machine-economy. 
In speaking of "taste," I do not mean only the nicer 
aesthetic discrimination which distinguishes between an 
oil painting and an oleograph, and which detects the 
inherent imperfections in photography. Throughout 
the whole field of commodities there exists a neces- 
sary war between the individual consumer and machine- 
production. Take tailoring for an example. Coats can 
be cut out quickly and cheaply by machinery, upon one 
condition, viz., that those who are to wear them will 
consent to forego a precise fit and take an average fit. 
No two individuals are exactly the same in figure, and 
therefore a machine-cut coat, constructed to suit many 
persons, can never be an exact fit for any one of them ; 



240 JOHN BUSKIN. 

it may be sufficiently near for " practical purposes,'' but 
a person who is " particular " will always demand a 
hand-cut coat. So in every other case, machine-economy 
requires individuals to merge their individuality and to 
consent to conform to a common type. Now lack of indi- 
vidual taste or lack of money may induce large numbers 
of persons to make this sacrifice ; but educated persons 
do it unwillingly, and if they have money they refuse 
to do it. In a community of widespread wealth, with 
growing education, this will always form a natural check 
upon machine-economy. How far and in what precise 
direction this check will operate is disputable. All per- 
sons will and must consent to conform in some respects 
and to consume common routine goods. Few will insist 
that their buttons shall be hand-made, that the flour 
they eat shall be ground by hand. But wherever the 
consumer desires to express his individuality in his 
consumption, and can afford to do so, he exercises a 
demand for commodities which cannot be supplied by 
machinery, but constitute a " special order " to be exe- 
cuted by the skill of a human worker. The best work, 
therefore, must always remain outside machine-economy. 
It is here, then, that the character of the consumer 
comes in as an important factor. 

The rapid mechanical improvements of our age have 
corrupted and repressed the taste of the consuming 
public, stimulating a demand for increased quantities 
of goods rather than for improved qualities. It is 
not of course right to ignore or to depreciate the 
immense services machinery has rendered in enabling 
the poorer classes to acquire increased stores of the 
common comforts of life, from which they were for- 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 241 

merly precluded. Much, if not most of this common 
work of satisfying the grosser material needs, is rightly 
performed by machinery applied to manufacture, trans- 
port, and (pace Mr. Ruskin) even to agriculture. But 
it is of the utmost importance that, after these common 
needs are thus satisfied, further progress in consumption 
shall take a qualitative more than a quantitative charac- 
ter. For here the vital identity of interests between pro- 
ducer and consumer is seen. So long as consumers sink 
their individuality, and seek merely to enlarge the num- 

| ber of their material needs, and to express their " pros- 
perity" in more food and clothing, larger houses, and 
gross expenditure on coarse external show, they are 
forcing upon vast numbers of workers a monotonous 
life of machine or routine work. When, on the other 
hand, increased prosperity means the demand for a better 
and a higher life, more taste and variety in material 
goods, luxuries which are the product of art or skilled 
workmanship, increased expenditure upon intellectual 
goods, a wholesome reaction takes place upon the con- 
dition of employment all over the industrial field. This 
is the choice of life for an individual or a nation, between 
a quantitative and a qualitative self-expression. Mr. 
Ruskin has performed no greater service than in pro- 
testing against the lamentable assumption that the in- 
dustrial prosperity of a nation consists in the quantity 
of marketable goods she can produce by the most eco- 
nomical use of machinery and division of labour. We 
may not agree with him in the narrow limits he would 
assign to machines ; we may recognise a legitimate and 
most serviceable co-operation between machinery and 

! human skill in the production of fine qualities of 



242 JOHN BUSKIN. 

wealth, machinery more and more taking over the 
rough, coarser, routine groundwork, and leaving to 
human art the more delicate manipulation and finish 
which gives character and tone ; we would not seek 
to stereotype for any nation or any age the kinds of 
consumption in which its individual taste will seek ex- 
pression. But though machinery is not the enemy, and 
may even be made the servant of art, we feel that Mr. 
Ruskin is right in his preachment against the grave 
danger of mechanising life at the present time. 

I have confined my illustrations to industries engaged 
in producing material wealth. When we examine Mr. 
Ruskin's views on education, we shall see how power- 
fully he emphasises the same dangers in the production 
of intellectual wealth, the mental factory system by 
which quantities of stereotype intellectual wares are 
forced on the body of consumers through schools and 
printing-presses, the mechanism of churches, political 
organisations, and social conventions of every kind. 

Thus we perceive that Mr. Ruskin's hostility against 
machinery is far from being, as some would represent 
it, a mere fantastic revolt against machinery, ugliness, 
and smoke. It is part of a wider feeling that produc- 
tion so carried on is " unnatural," in the sense that it 
takes away the initiative and the productive force from 
man, and the familiar friendly forces of animals, wind, 
and water, and hands them over to a lower power, which 
enslaves human labour, and drives it by imposing condi- 
tions of unnatural routine and unwholesome tension. 
There is a characteristic passage in which Mr. Ruskin 
objects to forcing flowers and fruit : " The vile and glut- 
tonous habit of forcing never allows people properly 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 243 

to taste anything." * Here we have the same root of 
hostility, the interference with the beauty and order of 
natural processes, with the result that the two human 
gains of gardening are lost, the wholesome work in free 
air on natural soil, the timely fruits of labour in their 
due season. The whole of his criticism of modern 
industry in its double and related injury to " producer " 
and " consumer " lies in this illustration. 

§ 8. The largest and most dramatic form of the 
danger of machinery is the modern industrial town. 
Modern Manchester and Leeds are typical machine- 
made products ; they exist primarily not as " cities," 
for the wholesome social life of citizens, but as work- 
shops, for the most economical production and distri- 
bution of machine-made goods. Mr. Ruskin is filled 
with voluble indignation whenever he approaches the 
subject; to him these are monstrous wens on the fair 
face of England, huge areas of grimy, ugly streets, 
buildings unredeemed and unredeemable by architec- 
ture, the exhausted atmosphere noxious with foul vapours, 
and black with smoke from giant chimneys ; the popu- 
lation are engaged in a degrading struggle to get rich 
at the expense of one another, or to scrape together 
a miserable livelihood. No sound human life, no true 
work can thrive in such conditions. That the inhabitants 
of such a place can be content, or even proud of their 
town, is in itself the most striking proof of its degrading 
influence on character. His condemnation is upon every 
count, hygienic, industrial, intellectual, and moral. He 
holds that " no great arts were practicable by any people 
unless they were living contented lives, in pure air, out 
1 Fors, Letter xlvi. (ii. 458). 



244 JOHN BUSKIN. 

of the way of unsightly objects, and emancipated from 
unnecessary mechanical occupation." 1 Still more evil 
is the fate of those ancient towns which have fallen 
from their old estate into modern industry, — such a 
town as Abingdon, where the county-gaol, police-office, 
and a large gasometer are the most conspicuous fea- 
tures. But perhaps the most scathing realism is found 
in his account of the suburban villadom which is the 
typical expression of middle-class character and aspira- 
tions in a modern town. In " Fors " he gives us the 
following account of the district between Sydenham and 
Penge, within his memory one of the fairest regions of 
the South of England : " That same district is now cov- 
ered by, literally, many thousands of houses, built within 
the last ten years of rotten brick, with various iron 
devices to hold it together. They, every one, have a 
drawing-room and dining-room, transparent from back 
to front. They have a second story of bedrooms, and 
an underground one of kitchen. They are fastened in 
a Siamese-twin manner together by their sides, and each 
couple has a Greek or Gothic portico shared between 
them, with magnificent steps and highly ornamented 
capitals. Attached to every double block are exactly 
similar double parallelograms of garden, laid out in new 
gravel and scanty turf, on the model of the pleasure 
grounds in the Crystal Palace, and enclosed by high, 
thin, and pale brick walls. The gardens in front are 
fenced from the road with an immense weight of cast 
iron, and entered between two square gate-posts, with 
projecting stucco cornices, bearing the information that 
the eligible residence within is Mortimer House or Mon- 
1 Fors, Letter ix. (i. 177). 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 245 

tague Villa. On the other side of the road, which is laid 
freshly down with large flints, and is deep at the sides in 
ruts of yellow mud, one sees Burleigh House, or Devon- 
shire Villa, still to let, and getting leprous in patches all 
over the fronts. ... Of the men, their wives and chil- 
dren, who live in any of these houses, probably not the 
fifth part are possessed of one common manly or womanly 
skill, knowledge, or means of happiness. The men can 
indeed write, and cast accounts, and go to town every 
day to get their living by doing so ; the women and 
children can perhaps read story-books, dance in a vulgar 
manner, and play upon a piano with dull dexterities for 
exhibition ; but not a member of the whole family can, 
in general, cook, sweep, knock in a nail, drive a stake, 
or spin a thread. They are still less capable of fine 
work. They know nothing of painting, sculpture, or 
architecture ; of science, inaccurately, as much as may 
more or less account to them for Mr. Pepper's ghost, 
and make them disbelieve in the existence of any other 
ghost but that, particularly the Holy One : of books they 
read Maemillari's Magazine on week days and Good Words 
on Sundays, and are entirely ignorant of all the standard 
literature belonging to their own country, or to any 
other. . . . They cannot enjoy their gardens, for they 
have neither sense nor strength enough to work in them. 
The women and girls have no pleasure but in calling on 
each other in false hair, cheap dresses of gaudy stuffs, 
machine-made and high-heeled boots, of which the pat- 
tern was set to them by Parisian prostitutes of the lowest 
order : the men have no faculty beyond that of cheating 
in business ; no pleasures but in smoking or eating ; and 
no ideas nor any capacity of forming ideas, of anything 



246 JOHN RUSKIN. 

that has yet been done of great, or seen of good, in this 
world." 1 Such is the character of the industrial town 
as reflected in the life of the Philistine class, according 
to Mr. Ruskin. 

§ 9. Causally related to this dominance of the indus- 
trial town is the decay of the country. The most dis- 
tinctive fact in the external life of modern England is 
the decline of agriculture and the progressive diminution 
of the agricultural workers. Industrial economy regards 
this change with indifference, or rather with compla- 
cency, as testimony to the increased productivity of town 
life. To Mr. Ruskin it is an unmitigated evil, equally 
injurious to town or country, for the noxious influence 
of town life is not even confined to the towns. Every 
big town is a huge sucker, draining in the best blood 
from the country and using it up in two generations, 
reaching out its antennas in the shape of railways and 
water-pipes to ruin the scenery, polluting the rivers and 
converting lakes into reservoirs : within forty miles of 
London it is scarcely possible to buy pure milk, poultry, 
vegetables, or any agricultural product, owing to this 
greedy suction of the metropolis. All this occurs with 
what object ? to maintain an ugly, unhealthy, immoral, 
and almost useless city life, where a small class live in 
luxurious idleness or mischievous activity, a large class 
in sordid and toilsome penury, and where the " City " 
so-called is not the home of citizens but the gambling- 
hell of cunning merchants and speculators. Such is the 
picture Ruskin presents in many passages of his later 
books. 2 The startling vividity of his language possibly 

i Fors, Letter xxix. (ii. 99-101). 

2 E. g. Fors, Letter xliv. (ii. 410, etc.). 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 247 

repels as many readers as it convinces : and some exag- 
geration may well be admitted. Neither the health nor 
the character of town dwellers has suffered to the extent 
which Mr. Ruskin's contrast would indicate, nor is the 
work so purely selfish, useless, or mechanical as he often 
represents. And yet we feel the indictment to be sub- 
stantially correct. Commercial economy has succeeded 
in blinding the public to the dangerous significance of 
the absorption of national life and energy in machine- 
made towns. The endeavour to civilise the towns, so as 
to make them sound social centres, may do much to mit- 
igate the worst phases of the maladies upon which Mr. 
Ruskin dwells ; but it is difficult to believe that a nation, 
three-quarters of which are dwellers in towns and chiefly 
in large towns, can preserve intact the vigour of physique 
and character which is essential to the progress of a 
nation. 

Even those who are coming to look upon England as 
one small field in our imperial estate should find some 
difficulty in reconciling to their intelligence such local 
specialisation as shall make England a purely manufac- 
turing and commercial area, no longer breeding in rural 
life the bone, muscle, and brain which have made the 
empire, but depending for its force and progress in the 
future upon colonial lives. To many, we are aware, 
this movement seems inevitable ; the forces making for 
large town life in England seem to them natural and 
necessary. The industrial destiny of England has in- 
deed been so incessantly dinned into our ears during 
this century, that it seems to some the only destiny. 
More money can be made by going to work in large 
towns ; that appears a final irrefutable argument. And 



248 JOHN RUSKIN. 

indeed we are not sanguine about its speedy refutation. 
But, with Mr. Ruskin, we may remind ourselves, that it 
is only within recent times that we have submitted all 
values of individual and national life to the arbitrament 
of the counter. A wider view of our history does not 
mark us as an exclusively, or even a distinctively, indus- 
trial nation, or one which only counted commercial 
gains. It is quite true that so long as, and in so far as, 
we allow purely monetary consideration of profits and | 
wages exclusively to settle for us where we shall live, 
what air we shall breathe, what company of nature or of 
man we shall keep, what work we shall do, what kind 
of home, what kind of children we shall have, the recent 
townward movement is necessary. But if, with Mr. Rus- 
kin, we consent to take a wider social outlook, nay, even 
if we are guided by a more truly enlightened self-inter- 
est, we shall refuse to confine our calculation to mone- 
tary values, and to leave out of view all the higher and 
nobler " goods " which, by their nature, are above money 
and above price, — air, sunshine, scenery, elbow-room, 
attachment to land and home, neighbourhood, the char- 
acter and interest of work, leisure and spare energy for 
self-cultivation and enjoyment. These goods are in- 
herent in sound rural life, and cannot be permanently 
ignored by a people capable of education and of progress. I 
Many of them are imperfectly procurable in the rural 
life of modern England, as Mr. Ruskin clearly recog- 
nises. Drastic reforms of land-tenure and of social gov- 
ernment are essential to win for rural work and life that 
wholesome stimulus to individual energy, and that social 
order which are essential to agricultural prosperity and 
to the production of sound manhood and womanhood. 



INDUSTRIAL TOWNS. 249 

The urgent need of these reforms absorbed more and 
more of Mr. Ruskin's thought in later years, for he 
rightly saw that the dangers of mechanical, unnatural 
town life can only be met by educating a truer and more 
discriminative valuation. In order that the agricultural 
life may be valued more highly it must become more 
valuable : it must not be the worn-out relic of a dead 
feudalism with all incentive taken from work, all intelli- 
gence and hope from life, as is the case in agricultural 
England to-day : it must be a restored yeomanry with 
adequate control of soil, competent to work it, and 
able to secure, by wholesome co-operation, all requisite 
advantages of intellectual and spiritual life. 



CHAPTER X. 

EDUCATION. 

§ 1. The place of education in Social Keform. § 2. Industrialism 
in education — False aims. § 3. The materialistic view of ed- 
ucation — Payment by results. § 4. Use and abuse of compe- 
tition. § 5. Neglect of physical and moral training. § 6. Na- 
ture as a source of education. § 7. The cultivation of the 
aesthetic taste. § 8. From nature to humanity — The need of 
sociology to supplement psychology. § 9. The place of home 
in education. § 10. Inhumanities of our present methods. 
§ 11. The outline of Mr. Ruskin's scheme. § 12. Mr. Ruskin's 
two distinctive notes — The need of manual work. § 13. The 
teaching of " habits of gentleness and justice." § 14. Mr. 
Ruskin as Oxford teacher. 

§ 1. Always a teacher, and always reflecting upon 
methods and processes, it was inevitable that Mr. Ruskin 
should have fresh, free, and vigorous ideas about educa- 
tion. A peculiar interest attaches to the profound con- 
viction which marks all that he says upon the training 
of the young. For though all of us profess to believe in 
" education," few of us even now truly realise it as an 
organic process of developing the capacities of a human 
soul ; for the most part we only believe in processes of 
learning, the result of which is an attainment of knowl- 
edge ; or at the most we believe in a certain sharpening 
of aptitudes for the practical work of life. Even where 
sound principles of teaching are acquired, the stress upon 
intellectualism is commonly so strong as to narrow and 

250 



EDUCATION. 251 

deform the true meaning of education, which is "the 
leading human souls to what is best, and making what is 
best out of them. ,, All specialism, even the specialism 
of a science of Pedagogics, is prone to stereotype ideas 
and processes, which ill accords with the watchful free- 
dom and delicate plasticity of method that is required 
for the moulding of souls. 

It is essential to Mr. Ruskin, as social reformer, that 
he should have clear ideas on education of the young. 
For what marks him off most distinctively from others 
is the repudiation of all mechanical or merely external 
methods of reform, and his insistence upon individual 
and social character as the means and the end. 

The understanding of the nature and sources of social 
wrong and social waste, the feelings of pity and indig- 
nation which stimulate redress, the patient labour un- 
dertaken for a distant common good, the " habits of 
gentleness and justice " which shall keep a new and 
better order safe and strong, — these things are only 
possible by education of true civic character. In order 
to " elevate the race at once," we must work upon the 
malleable nature of children. All Mr. Ruskin's books, 
but especially " A Joy for Ever," " Sesame and Lilies," 
and " Fors," are rich in contribution towards this art of 
education, abounding in critical and constructive sugges- 
tions. In no sense a pedagogic expert, nor making 
much use of technical language, his wise and humane 
thoughts furnish an admirable, independent support and 
corroboration of the more scientific methods connected 
with such names as Herbart, Pestalozzi, Froebel, which 
are slowly but surely winning their way into our schools, 
while serving to check by their simplicity and sweetness 



252 JOHN BUSKIN. 

any tendency to hardness and elaboration which a science 
is apt to put on with its esoteric terminology. Moreover 
the keeping a social ideal always before our eyes is a 
wholesome counterpoise to the individualism which, for 
many purposes, is a sound and necessary principle for the 
practical educationalist, who finds his greatest difficulties 
in the idiosyncrasies of particular children. 

§ 2. Seeing that, however much we pretend to divide 
it, life is one, it was inevitable that Mr. Ruskin should 
find in existing education copies of all the representative 
vices of industrial society. 

As a nation, our disinterested love of ideas, our rev- 
erence for " sweetness and light," have not been strong 
enough to keep our educational system free from the 
domination of the industrialism which so thoroughly 
absorbs the national energy. 

In " Sesame and Lilies " he inveighs against the 
enslavement of education, even among the middle and 
upper classes, to the " gospel of getting on." The 
" success in life," which education is to win for boys, is 
conceived in terms of lucrative employment, or as the 
satisfaction of social ambition: "what is sought is an 
education which shall keep a good coat on my son's 
back, which shall enable him to ring with confidence 
the visitor's bell at double-belled doors, which shall 
result ultimately in the establishment of a double-belled 
door to his own house." 1 Even Mr. Ruskin was prob- 
ably unaware of the countless subtle ways by which 
money-making and social snobbishness everywhere creep 
into the schools of " the classes," poisoning the intellec- 
tual and moral atmosphere both of our great historic 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 2. 



EDUCATION. 253 

schools and of the select private establishments designed 
far less to make good men and women than to feed the 
pride and exclusiveness of that very caste to which Mr. 
Ruskin yet chiefly looked for the redemption of England. 
As for the public education of the people, though pioneers 
have ever striven to hold up the banner of the ideal, and 
are still labouring to humanise the system, it will be true 
to say that the real national support of popular education 
is the conviction that without reading, writing, and the 
first four rules of arithmetic, a man is at a disadvantage 
in getting and spending money. It is felt that a nation 
of shopkeepers should at least secure for its members 
the capacity to " keep accounts ! " 

If a detailed and veracious history of the beginnings 
of the modern Technical Education movement could 
be written, it would give an instructive and a humor- 
ous corroboration of Mr. Ruskin' s charge upon this 
head. With the national avarice inflamed by fears of 
competing Germany, Technical Education, a vague, 
formless conception, floated upon a sea of our most 
potent national beverage, 1 was foisted upon our raw 
County Councils, who, not even pretending to know 
what was to be done, set about to do it, sucked, pulled, 
or goaded on to start rash experiments, to subsidise use- 
less or pernicious schools, and to deal out money to any 
institution which could bring sufficient pressure on them. 
What technical education was, how it should be con- 
ducted, no one knew ; but every one seemed agreed that 
it could be successfully imposed upon the foundation of 
our elementary system, — the most fatuous notion that 

1 The " Whiskey Money, 1 ' earmarked by Mr. Goschen for 
Technical Education. 



254 JOHN BUSKIN. 

ever entered the head of official man. Slowly and 
stupidly, at huge expense, we are learning something 
practical about the unity and organic character of educa- 
tion, how that education, conducted with a single eye to 
the shop, will not even successfully cater to our avarice, 
but requires some mean basis of general culture to stand 
upon. 

In one of the best-known passages of " Sesame " Mr. 
Ruskin denounces the shortsighted penury of the state 
in its patronage of art, science, and literature, for leav- 
ing its duty to the spasmodic benevolence of private 
individuals, and merely encouraging certain narrow 
forms of science and art with a strict view to busi- 
ness, that we may learn to sell canvas as well as coal, 
and crockery as well as iron. 

§ 3. The end of education being conceived in mortal 
error, it follows that the standard or test of educational 
success is vitiated. The real meaning of the charge of 
" materialism " often brought against our nation and 
age, is that we judge success by quantitative measures. 
As we measure the wealth of nations or persons by the 
amount of money or of other property they possess, so 
we measure education by quantity of attainment in 
knowledge. 

" Payment by results " is a most enlightening phrase 
in our educational system. In order to work such a 
system, you must regard education as a process of ac- 
quisitiveness, engaged in accumulating lumps of knowl- 
edge of various sorts and sizes, which are deposited in 
the brain, and which can be produced, measured, and 
expressed in " marks " at regular periods of stock-taking. 
Needless to say, under the sway of such an idea, a school 



EDUCATION. 255 

becomes a factory of knowledge, engaged in putting into 
the heads of little boys and girls the largest quantity 
of measurable facts within a given time, a process defi- 
nitely and purposely encouraged by the free permission 
given to their parents to use these children for wage- 
earning, so soon as their heads have been once packed 
with the required quantity. This is a crude form of 
evil, widely condemned by all thoughtful persons, but 
very slow to disappear from a school system where 
" economy " is always understood to refer to current 
expenditure of money : surviving even in " high-class " 
schools under the direct encouragement of parents who, 
for the most part, have and can have no other guarantee 
that they are " getting what they pay for," than the 
examinations which their children pass. 

With their lips all schoolmasters and most parents 
condemn " cram," and " cram " of the cruder sort is 
perhaps diminishing; but our educational system still 
insists upon the cultivation of so many " subjects," 
imposed for the most part upon unwilling recipients, 
that even the better-ordered schools retain much of the 
factory character. A factory implies mechanism. In- 
sisting, as he did, that no good thing can come out 
of a machine, least of all would Mr. Ruskin admit 
mechanical methods into education. We are not 
always aware how grave this particular danger is to 
a nation of our temperament. Our virtues as well as 
our vices favour it. Not only are we, as a nation, little 
amenable to the direct attraction of ideas of truth and 
beauty, but our very love of order, the source of our 
national strength, drives us to mechanism in education. 
Take an extreme and a peculiarly painful example. 



256 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Criminals are persons of disordered, abnormal minds, 
requiring for their judicious care and healing not less 
but more delicate individual consideration than persons 
of normal character. But how do we deal with these 
cases in our prisons which profess to be reformatory, 
i. e. educational establishments ? We rigidly mechanise 
the entire life by fixed routine of times, places, occupa- 
tions ; having the care of men who have sinned against 
society we reconcile tfaem to society by desocialising 
them ; knowing by our most familiar proverb that 
" man is a social animal," we proceed to dehumanise 
him by removing all social support and sympathy. 
The most delicate organic operation, that of repairing 
bad or diseased character, we seek to compass by 
machine methods, so that the very virtue of our 
prison system, the absolute good order which prevails, 
constitutes its most damning indictment. This illus- 
trates in one great public department the grave danger 
which besets all our education, the application of me- 
chanical instead of organic treatment. If a school were 
a factory, and if the object really were to turn out 
large quantities of intellectual goods of certain common 
brands, the mechanical method would be the correct 
one. But we cannot hope to make " souls of a good 
quality " by such a method. 

§ 4. With the mechanical utilitarian conception of 
education the moral and economic vice of competition 
is naturally allied. So long as you look to quantity of 
wares alone, with little regard to quality, and with 
liberty to adulterate as much as you can, keen com- 
petition is an excellent spur to production. Prize 
scholars warranted to put down on paper the correct 



EDUCATION. 257 



formal answers to routine series of questions relating 

to prescribed areas of knowledge, can be produced 

better under a competitive system than in any other 

! way ; for acquisitiveness is thus best fed alike in pupil 

and schoolmaster. Mr. Ruskin's denunciation of com- 

i petitive examination thus belongs to his general con- 

i demnation of mechanism in education. 

Here Mr. Ruskin does yeoman service in a cause 
I which all true educationalists have at heart. The bar- 
! barous method of goading boys and girls to knowledge 
! by appealing to the lust of self-assertion, and by setting 
(each one's head and heart against his fellow's in the 
; pursuit of intellectual wealth, is even more base and more 
unnatural than the corresponding policy in material 
! industry. The limitation of supply of the best materials 
I of industrial wealth affords there a " natural " basis of 
! antagonism, only to be overcome by the growth of social 
1 sentiment ; whereas no such limits apply to intellectual 
i wealth ; one man in gaining knowledge need not make 
another lose, or by increasing his store reduce the store 
of another. It is only when the true ends of education, 
knowledge and self-development, are deliberately set 
aside, and some false end, pride of place, or some ex- 
traneous prize, is thrust forward, that the appeal of a 
competitive examination is made effective. But while 
thoughtful reformers are sensible of the folly and the 
immorality of corrupting the love of ideas in the young, 
in making learning a means to a narrow selfish end, 
there is some fear that this cause is injured by the 
undue preaching of counsels of perfection. There is 
this root-difficulty in all education, that the application 
of the ideally best motives presumes a more complete 



258 JOHN BUSKIN. 

attainment of rationality in the learner than can ex I 
hypothesi actually exist. Just as in the early physical 
training of a child, certain habits of necessary conduct 
must be authoritatively imposed, because the intelli- 
gence is too crude and unformed to understand their 
rationality ; so in intellectual education we cannot always 
trust to the inherent attractiveness of ideas to stir the I 
sluggish energies of a young mind to move along an 
unexplored path. For this cause some alloy of coer- 
cion and of appeals to lower motives may temper the 
purely rational motive. The same general distinction 
which applies in industrial competition holds also here. 
Where competition acts as a spur to excellence of work, 
concentrating the thoughts upon the work in hand, and 
does not cause malicious brooding and contrivance to 
secure the failure of another, it occupies a legitimate 
place. The distinction is a sound and useful one, 
though the margin between use and abuse may be 
easily transgressed. Only as education actually attains 
its end of informing and enlightening the soul can this l 
alloy of irrationality and selfishness be cast off, and the 
goodness of ideas be allowed freely to work upon us by 
their pure worthiness alone. 

Mr. Ruskin is not, as sometimes is supposed, the! 
undiscriminating enemy of competition. No one draws i 
the just distinction more convincingly than he. " I 
want you to compete, not for the praise of what you 
know, but for the praise of what you become ; and to 
compete only in that great school where death is the : 
examiner and God the judge." 1 

How far Mr. Ruskin was prepared to sanction 
1 The Eagle's Nest, § 212. 



EDUCATION. 259 

| the further compromise enjoined by the imperfectly 
rational nature of all learners I cannot say. But in 
every field of endeavour such compromise is valid, 

I and any refusal to practise it involves some waste of 

| energy. 

After all due allowances are made, the abuses of 

! competition in our schools have been very grave, and 
Mr. Ruskin's outcry has been of the greatest service in 
stimulating revolt against this tyranny of commercialism 
over education. 

§ 5. Another radical criticism of current education 

! requires consideration. The mechanical and quantitative 

i spirit not merely prevails in our school curricula and 
methods, in more subtle ways it enters and contaminates 
the best culture of our nation. In our choicest academic 
circles, everywhere where " culture " is most prized, the 
tendency to identify education with acquirements and 
accomplishments, and with the collection and satisfaction 
of many interests and curiosities about nature, men, and 
books, is clearly perceptible. Mr. Ruskin does not, 
indeed, follow Tolstoy in his reactionary condemnation 
of intellectualism, but he does distinctly and powerfully 
denounce the excessive valuation set upon intellectual 
attainments held as possessions and ornamental appen- 
dages of life. 

" A man is not educated, in any sense whatsoever, 
because he can read Latin or write English, or can 
behave himself in a drawing-room ; but he is only edu- 
cated if he is happy, busy, beneficent, and effective in 
the world. Millions of peasants are, therefore, at this 
moment better educated than most of those who call 

! themselves gentlemen ; and the means taken to educate 



260 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the lower classes in any other sense may very often be 
productive of a precisely opposite result." x 

This passage may serve for a convenient bridge from 
Mr. Ruskin's critical to his constructive principles in 
education. 

As in the fine arts, as in all industry, so in education, 
his teaching contains two spinal thoughts, — the rightful 
dominance of moral ideas in directing the formation of 
character, and the need of an accurate first-hand and 
vital study of the facts of nature and of human life. 

These are not idle platitudes ; on the contrary, they 
are implicitly denied and practically set aside in most 
schemes of education. 

The common meaning given to the unqualified word 
" education " by all classes attests the undue weight of 
the intellectual side. Physical, aesthetic, and moral 
claims are indeed making some way, but the tendency 
to treat them as separate and subordinate departments 
is still general, and shows the deep-rooted mechanism 
of our methods. It is the lack of harmony or unity of 
thought which explains the excess which rude, ill-ordered 
physical exercises have attained in our aristocratic 
schools, and the slight perfunctory attention given to 
physical training in the schools for the poorer classes. 
The woful neglect to provide any food and direct train- 
ing to the aesthetic tastes and the moral faculties, as an 
integral part of the education of children, furnishes, 
however, the most signal illustration of our national 
defect in the work of education. This is due partly 
to a failure of philosophic grasp, partly to the fore- 
named spirit of commercialism, which naturally post- 
1 Stones of Venice, iii., Appendix vii. 



EDUCATION. 261 

pones and ignores such training as cannot be tested and 
justified by directly measurable results. The practical 
mind, which rules education through the public and the 
private purse, still adopts an attitude towards aesthetic 
and moral education which is fraught with deep injury. 
^Esthetic education is still relegated to a sphere of 
" accomplishments," desirable, perhaps, where time and 
money can be afforded to procure them, but luxuries in 
" education," while the crudest forms of moral training 
are given under the head of religious instruction. 

The vital influences of education, according to Mr. 
Ruskin, are two, — Nature and Humanity ; the badness of 
our common education consists in ignoring or perverting 
these holy sources of power. 

To make a child of Nature and a Human Being is the 
end of education. 

§ 6. It is not " sentimentalism," but a deep sense of 
physical and moral truth, which impels Mr. Ruskin to 
insist upon a free outdoor life, amid pure and beautiful 
natural surroundings, as the first essential of education. 
All readers will remember the verses of Wordsworth, 
which he quotes in " Lilies," beginning : 

" Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said, « A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown. 
This child I to myself will take : 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own.' " 

This free, friendly, constant intercourse with field 

and forest, stream and mountain, the flow of the seasons 

I and the changes on the face of nature that they bring, 



262 joun ruskin. 

are vital and essential needs of the education of healthy 
and happy childhood, and it is their denial which is the 
first great waste and injury to life done by our industrial 
life in cities. Mr. Ruskin sets aside the fatuous reply 
which tells us that country-bred people do not notice or 
love nature as well as town-bred people. In the first 
place it is false ; in the second place it misunderstands 
the vital use of nature, which does not consist in sen- 
timental seeking of beautiful effects of scenery, but in 
the free and hardly conscious sympathy with the life 
of nature which rises from familiar dwelling with her 
processes. 

This education of nature is neither to be won by 
occasional emotional excursions nor by analytic study 
prompted by purely intellectual interest. Mr. Ruskin is 
often unduly contemptuous and suspicious of the genuine 
advance in education made by giving more attention to 
the natural sciences. To bring dead bits of nature into 
the schoolroom of a crowded city for dissection, in order 
to teach botany or biology, is a proceeding which rouses 
his animosity, and incites him to utter language about 
" science " which he has sometimes had occasion to 
regret. But while the advance of natural science in 
school teaching is a distinct gain, alike in scope of train- 
ing and in actuality, upon the old monopoly of language j 
and mathematics, it must be admitted that it does by no 
means serve the highest educational purpose of which 
nature is capable, and that Mr. Ruskin is fully justified 
in insisting that contact with " wild and fair nature " 
is essential to lay the just foundation of sane and whole- 
some emotions. Beauty of nature is needed first. " All 
education to beauty is, first, in the beauty of gentle 



EDUCATION. 263 

faces round a child ; secondly, in the fields." Even here 
there is a tendency of modern pedagogy to err. In his 
admirably sympathetic account of Mr. Ruskin's educa- 
1 tional methods, Mr. Jolly seems to me to strike a some- 
what false note in the stress he lays upon the use of 
i outdoors as " an uncovered class-room." There is a 
distinct danger in the conscious strain to get direct 
| educational value out of everything. Nature will not 
! do for her children what Wordsworth claims, if she is 
i regarded as " an outer uncovered class-room " 1 to be 
! promenaded by a pedagogic showman with a pointer. 
The greatest uses of nature are unconscious, free, secret 
; gifts which come, like every happiness, when they are 
not sought. All this is quite consistent with the intelli- 
gent and accurate study of natural objects and processes, 
and even with the discernment of the operation of scien- 
tific laws. It is only a question of stress, the amount of 
time given to receptivity, and a recognition of the uses 
of idleness, which Wordsworth himself so beautifully 
illustrated and justified, that " majestic indolence so dear 
to native man," the " broad margin to life " which 
another lover of nature craved. 

Mr. Ruskin is surely right in demanding that our 
scientific interests shall not crowd out the unthinking 
sympathy, and that there is a danger here which re- 
quires recognition. It is above all the atmosphere of 
nature that we need to breathe with free unconscious 
drafts. In the field excursions and country rambles 
which more enlightened teachers are grafting on to 
school life, care should be taken that these unconscious 
influences of nature, the " vital feelings of delight " 
i "Kuskin on Education," by W. Jolly, p. 42. 



264 JOHN BUSKIN. 



which come to the young from the everlasting youth 
and beauty of natural processes, be the first considera- 
tion, and that the guidance of the intellectual curiosity 
towards " laws " and causality of every sort shall be 
secondary and incidental. Field clubs and geological 
excursions are excellent things, but so to feed the col- 
lecting appetite of a child that it approaches nature 
chiefly as a quarry or a herbarium is to produce a pecu- 
liarly offensive sort of prig. When the acquisitive spirit! 
has got so strong a hold over national life as it has in 
England, there is a genuine risk of this perversion of 
educational energy. 

§ 7. For the cultivation of taste, the aesthetic sense, 
Mr. Ruskin, therefore, rightly insists upon a fuller rec- 
ognition of the passive and insensible influences shed 
upon the soul by beautiful and stimulative material 
surroundings. This does not mean the absence of 
human effort and design. Not merely by going out 
freely to nature will a child drink in ideas of beauty 
which shall mould his form and character: the true 
teacher's art will largely be engaged in making an art, 
atmosphere of the schoolroom, which shall give dignity 
and interest to the more definite instruction of teachers i 
and books by its grace and suggestiveness. Cheap furni- 
ture and bare walls are no proper features of a school- ! 
room. The school demands " refined architectural 
decoration," every form of "noble" luxury should be 
there, everything which can by its presence inform the 
eye and ear and stimulate the imagination and the in-i 
tellect. Modern psychology bears out Mr. Ruskin in the 
emphasis it lays upon the sub-conscious factor, the 
great accretion of impressions slowly gathered from 



EDUCATION. 265 

large general surroundings, which yet plays a vitally 
important part in determining thought and emotion : to 
leave the plastic mind of young children open to a base, 
ugly, or depressing environment is to inflict upon them 
an incalculable wrong which can never be properly 
repaid in later life. 

Whatever is beautiful and interesting in nature and 
art should be in the schoolroom, so far as it can aid in 
this passive formative work, or lend support to more 
active education. 

§ 8. For convenience in characterising Mr. Ruskin's 
educational views I spoke of Nature and Humanity as 
two founts of influence. But it is of course' essential to 
his thought that the separation should never be retained. 
Nature as a source of influence must feed Humanity : 
education must give man's place in nature and enable 
him to hold that place. 

When, therefore, the end of education is stated in a 
simple way, it must always be related to some ideal of 
humanity, whether abstractly as with Mr. Herbert Spen- 
cer, who says, " To prepare us for complete living is 
the function which education has to discharge,'' or more 
concretely in Mr. Ruskin's well-known formula, " You 
do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, 
but by making him what he was not." But, while no 
one is likely to deny that the goal in education is forma- 
tion of character, there is a danger to which the teacher 
by the very necessities of his work is peculiarly prone, 
the too individualistic conception of humanity. To 
many of our ablest and most intelligent teachers educa- 
tion is the training of perfect human beings, the ideal 
being represented as the harmonious development of the 



266 JOHN RUSKIN. 

different parts of their nature as free isolated individ- 
uals. In order to comprehend rightly the sense in which 
" humanity " is the educational end, the place and work 
of the human being in society must be clearly under- 
stood. In the modern science and art of teaching, 
psychology, which almost necessarily confines itself to 
the study of the individual soul, is not adequately rein- 
forced by sociology. The practice of teaching demands 
so constant an attention to the idiosyncrasies of the 
pupils as to lead teachers too much to confine themselves 
to considering what each child needs for his individual 
development, and to neglect the claims which society 
has and intends to exercise in after life. Yet, as no one 
lives for himself alone, the end of education cannot be 
regarded as the perfection of individuals as such. Not 
only industry but social life in general requires a certain 
sacrifice of free individual development, represented by 
a specialisation of certain powers and a comparative 
neglect of others. This, of course, is only a sacrifice, so 
long as we regard individuals as separate self-sufficient 
units, which they are not : the so-called sacrifice becomes 
a gain as soon as we recognise the social character of 
man, which requires that he be formed not merely with 
regard to his individual perfection, but with regard to 
the perfection of the social organism of which he is a 
part. This proper balance and adjustment of the claims 
of individual and of society in the human purposes of 
education, none of our great teachers has grasped so 
vitally as Mr. Ruskin, for none of them has quite so 
clear and powerful a vision of the true society. 

§ 9. That education has been too purely intellectual 
in its aims, too mechanical in its methods, has been the 



EDUCATION. 267 

grave charge of our wisest censors. Matthew Arnold 
laid his finger upon the kernel of error when he insisted 
that our defect was lack of " humanity " in school teach- 
ing. Schools, however, are by no means entirely to 
blame. Humanity, which has its roots in " sensations 
that are just, measured, and continuous," cannot rely 
upon school life alone. The home is the first and the 
most potent sphere of human influence. England rather 
prides herself upon home life, but yet when we faithfully 
compare the actual possibilities of home for the mass of 
our city-bred children with the human requirements, we 
shall understand why savagery is so slowly rooted out 
from our national habits. " This is the true nature of 
home, — it is the place of peace ; the shelter not only 
from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. 
In so far as it is not this, it is not home ; so far as the 
anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the in- 
consistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society 
of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife 
to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home ; it is then 
only a part of the outer world which you have roofed 
over, and lighted fire in." * There are then grave dangers 
to be guarded against in the home of " the upper or un- 
distressed middle classes," whom Mr. Ruskin was here 
particularly addressing. For the mass of our children 
not merely the moral but the material basis of a true 
home is still wofully defective. None know better than 
our teachers in primary schools how intimately every 
problem of education is linked with reforms of the eco- 
nomic structure of society. But while the daily events 
of home life, the intimate dealings with friends and rela- 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 68. 



268 JOHN BUSKIN. 

tions, the gradually expanding horizon of neighbourhood 
must ever be the most powerful and continuous educa- 
tion in humanity, the school, as Mr. Ruskin conceived 
it, can do much that it does not do, or do properly. So 
long as narrow considerations of economy and sectarian 
jealousy are allowed to cramp and pinch the financial 
resources and the moral freedom of our schools, so long 
will the taunt that they are factories for the production 
of cheap clerks, have point. When we have national 
sense and dignity enough to recognise what truly " pays," 
we shall insist upon the literal realisation of one of our 
most devoted modern pioneers of education, who demands 
" not a poor education for the children of the poor, but 
the best possible education for the children of the 
nation." 

§ 10. Such an education requires not the bare bones 
of the three R's, with penurious allowances of facts in 
geography, history, hygiene, as its most liberal diet ; but 
a far larger, nobler, more profitable " economy." At 
present every cheap piano or swimming-bath is grudg- 
ingly granted or more commonly refused, as a wanton 
luxury likely to pamper children and to waste time; 
every meagre school accessory in the shape of instru- 
ments and " objects " is regarded with suspicion by 
school authorities ; every trivial step of liberality is won 
by a wasteful struggle. Even now almost every ele- 
ment which is distinctively human, and therefore useless 
in the Gradgrind sense, is rigidly banished from the 
schools of the people ; and even in the public schools of 
the " classes," in spite of recent progress, it is subordi- 
nated to drill in language and mathematics. In how 
many of our schools is history made a really vital sub- 



EDUCATION. 269 

ject ? What use is actually made of this infinite store- 
house of human wisdom and morality ? For the vast 
majority of our children, history still means a painfully 
acquired accumulation of dates and facts regarding 
battles and dynasties, unanimated by the spirit which 
cannot be produced for inspection and examination. 
The greatest literature (for our purposes at any rate) 
which the world has ever known lies either utterly 
neglected as an instrument of human culture in our 
schools and our universities, or else is insulted by being 
made a subject for vain repetition or philological ped- 
antry. It is not too much to say that local examina- 
tions have displayed an almost diabolical perversity of 
ingenuity in slaying the love and perverting the under- 
standing of Shakespeare in the minds of myriads of 
English boys and girls of the middle classes. 

It is Mr. Ruskin's perception and abhorrence of the 
inhumanity of our school teaching which leads him to 
that denunciation of the three R's for which he has been 
so much criticised. He not only refused to teach the 
three R's in his schools of St. George, but gave as his 
reason for objecting to reading and writing that " there 
are very few people in this world who get any good by 
either." But such sensational protests must not be 
taken literally, as representing his true convictions. 
In his careful, detailed schemes he provides " a chil- 
dren's library, in which the scholars who care to read 
may learn that art as deftly as they like by themselves, 
helping each other without troubling the master." 1 So, 
too, he would have taught other rudiments. His feigned 
rejection of the three R's may be understood as a dra- 
1 Fors, Letter xcv. (iv. 470). 



270 JOHN BUSKIN. 

matic protest against the barbarous notion which has ele- 
vated them into a national education, and which still 
insists that the State has done its duty to its children in 
providing this utterly inadequate equipment for the voy- 
age of life. There lurks a terrible prophetic significance 
in the following wise words from his " Crown of Wild 
Olive : " 1 " Education does not mean teaching people to 
know what they do not know ; it means teaching them 
to behave as they do not behave. It is not teaching the 
youth of England the shapes of letters and the tricks of 
numbers, and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic 
to roguery and their literature to lust." There is only 
too great reason to believe that the plague of gambling, 
which is sapping the moral life of the working classes 
to-day, andvthe twin evil of the monstrous consumption 
of the lowest orders of sensational journalism, are the 
natural and necessary results of a national education 
which ends in teaching to read and to calculate the 
odds, without even tempering these processes with 
humanising elements. 

§ 11. Let me set against our present schools the 
school as Mr. Ruskin sees it. It must be the first and 
most important of all public buildings, and must impress 
the senses with a beauty and dignity of architecture. It 
must be at once a library of best books, an art-gallery of 
sound models, a museum of minerals and other natural 
objects. Its walls must be hung with historical paint- 
ings, and not as now with maps and physiological dia- 
grams, which should be kept for special purposes, and 
not form part of the general character of the school. 
Workshops are to be attached, always a carpenter's, 

i § 144. 



EDUCATION. 271 

where possible a potter's shop. Everywhere a garden, 
playground, and cultivable land should surround the 
school, so that scholars could be employed in fine 
weather largely out-of-doors. Not only the three R's 
shall be reduced to an insignificant position, but gram- 
mar shall be altogether banished. Not that words are 
to be less studied than now, quite the contrary. Elocu- 
tion and literature shall teach the just and powerful 
use of language. Almost utterly neglected now, these 
studies shall occupy foremost places, cultivating the 
twin powers of the tongue and the pen in the use of 
words. Instead of a barren, artificial, mechanical 
analysis of words, elocution and literature will teach 
their human uses. Such study will not be less exact 
because more humane. Readers of " Sesame " will 
remember the almost superhuman standard of exacti- 
tude he requires in reading and speech, the painful dig- 
ging, crushing, and smelting he enjoins in order to get 
the full true meaning of good sentences, the necessity of 
cultivating " the habit of looking intensely at words, and 
assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable, — 
nay, letter by letter," the insistence that, in speaking, " a 
false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the par- 
liament of any civilised nation, to assign to a man a cer- 
tain degree of inferior dignity for ever." 1 In such a 
school the essentials of physical and moral health will 
be taught to all as a matter of course. A " sound sys- 
tem of elementary music" is regarded as a necessity. 
Literature shall be used, not only for teaching language, 
but for the " story," as history, travels, romance, or 
fairy-tale. " In poetry, Chaucer, Spencer, and Scott, for 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 15. 



272 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the upper classes, lighter ballad or fable for the lower. 
... No merely didactic or descriptive books should be 
permitted in the reading-room, but so far as they are 
used at all, studied in the same way as grammars ; and 
Shakespeare, accessible always aj; play-time in the library 
. . . should never be used as 'a school-book, nor even 
formally or continuously read aloud. He is to be 
known by thinking, not mouthing." 1 Drawing should 
be taught to all, being essential for the accurate per- 
formance of most skilled manual work. Geometry, 
astronomy, botany, zoology, will have their proper 
place, and Mr. Ruskin has many bright thoughts about 
teaching them. " And finally, to all children of what- 
ever gift, grade, or age, the laws of Honour, the habit of 
Truth, the Virtue of Humility, and the Happiness of 
Love." 2 

Such would be common properties of all schools ; the 
elements which would enter into the education of every 
child whose natural capacity fitted him to receive them. 
Upon such foundations would be constructed the proper 
specialisation which should recognise class, life-work, 
and locality. This we have already touched upon in 
relation to the ideal organisation of industry. The 
detailed stress which he lays upon Moral Education 
consists in an intense realisation of the practical uses 
of education in enabling men and women to perform 
effectively their duties towards themselves and their 
neighbours. It is here that he breaks away from that 
language too commonly adopted by educationalists, who 
speak as if the drawing out of the faculties was an end 
itself, as if the goal of education was the mere produc- 

1 Fors, Letter xcv. (iv. 470). 2 Fors, Letter xciv. (iv. 447). 



EDUCATION. 273 

! tion of a prize human being who should exist beautifully. 
I To Mr. Buskin the object of education is not to perfect 
! the functions of the human being in order that they may 
i be in sound condition, but with the strictly ulterior object 
\ that they may do their work well, and bring use and 
I happiness to their owner and to others. It is this note 
I which is significant in his elements of moral teaching. 
I " Moral Education begins in making the creature to be 
| educated, clean and obedient. This must be done 
i thoroughly and at all cost, and with any kind of com- 
| pulsion rendered necessary by the nature of the animal, 
I be it dog, child, or man. Moral Education consists in 
I making the creature practically serviceable to other crea- 
tures, according to the nature and extent of its own ca- 
pacities; taking care that it be healthily developed in 
such service. Moral Education is summed when the 
creature has been made to do its work with delight and 
! thoroughly." 1 

§ 12. Modern educationalists will recognise nothing 
new in these lines of reform except in the rich realism 
of detail which Mr. Ruskin's creative imagination wove 
around all his projects. Its significance is that it fur- 
nishes an independent corroboration of the rightness 
and utility of the teaching of great specialist reformers. 
But where Mr. Ruskin transcends the work of the 
specialist in educational reform, is in making such work 
an integral part of his wider social reform. In order 
properly to mark this connection I must crave particular 
attention for the two deepest and most distinctive notes 
of his educational theory. First is the need of manual 
training for all children, not merely as a part of whole- 
1 Fors Clavigera, quoted by Jolly, p. 117. 



274 JOHN RUSKW. 

some physical exercise, but as a preparation for the use- 
ful manual labour which we have seen he requires fromj 
all in a rightly ordered society. But without waiting! 
for a reconstructed society in which every one does his; 
share of the necessary manual labour, there are powerful ! 
reasons for recognising manual instruction as an integral! 
part of the education of all children. Educational re-! 
formers from Xenophon to Froebel have emphasised thej 
natural union of " head and hand" as the first principle! 
of education. Not merely is dexterity of hand and eyej 
a useful accomplishment, while the foolish and immoral j 
contempt which " gentility " affects for manual* work is! 
scotched in childhood; the direct intellectual gain is! 
still more important. Children who draw their intel- 
lectual pabulum from books alone, and whose experi-l 
ence embodies no regular and systematic experience of* 
the nature of matter in relation to human service, the! 
qualities of useful substances, and the tools and modes j' 
of work by which these substances can be wrought into s 
serviceable forms, grow up to manhood and womanhood, 
and pass on through life with an utterly defective grip 1 1 
on the earth on which they live and the material en- 1 
vironment of life. This is the supreme meaning of Mr.; 
Ruskin's insistence upon direct free contact with Nature jl 
and the practice of manual work. Human life without' 
these has no bottom; the gentlemen and ladies without I 
this education may get a reflected knowledge through, 
books and conversation ; they may, as managers of busi- 
nesses, politicians, philosophers, litterateurs, deal with the! 
hard facts of work and life, but their treatment will l£ 
be feeble and unsubstantial, because they have not the 
knowledge of the meaning of the words they use and of. 



EDUCATION. 275 

the ideas these words represent, which contact with the 
material facts alone can give. Take for example the 
thinking and speaking of politicians and political econo- 
mists regarding important issues of working life. How 
can a member of Parliament know how a measure affect- 
ing land will actually affect the agricultural labourer, 
if he does not know from personal experience what dig- 
ging or mowing is, or how a prison should be ordered if 
he does not know the sort of effect produced upon the 
temper and the nerves by turning a crank or pulling a 
cart ? How can an economist theorise regarding " un- 
skilled" labour when he does not know what driving 
wagons or carrying sacks of grain means physically ? I 
do not suggest that no man must theorise on matters the 
precise nature of which he has not experienced, but that, 
if he is safely to theorise, he must have had direct ex- 
perience of facts and feelings belonging to the same 
order as those involved. What applies to politicians 
and economists, who are directly engaged in determin- 
ing, practically or theoretically, large and intricate issues 
regarding human work upon matter, applies in various 
degrees to all other persons who think, read, and speak 
about workaday affairs. We have the loose habit of 
supposing that every one knows what such words as 
wood, iron, horses, ploughing, sawing, stoking, cotton- 
factory, warehouse mean, and that the meaning of most 
persons who use the words is the same. In fact, how- 
ever, the difference of meaning is almost infinitely great 
between such words as used by persons who have been 
J in familiar contact with the things and actions, and as 
I used by those who have only seen them casually, or per- 
1 haps even only read about them. The waste of intellec- 



276 JOHN BUSKIN. 

tual effort, often the positive injury, due to defective 
realisation of the meaning of common words is seldom 
rightly appreciated. Different gradations of reality, due 
to different focuses, are the direct cause of the widest 
and most unbridgeable differences of judgment. Mr. 
Ruskin therefore wisely insists that the education of all 
shall include direct contact with, and familiar experi- 
ence of, representative facts and feelings belonging to 
the various departments of material nature and human 
work upon matter. 

Not merely for use but for enjoyment is this neces- 
sary. What can the noblest poetry of nature, and the 
finest pictures of natural scenery mean to the average f 
Cockney, who has of necessity but a shadowy and L 
fourth-hand impression of the images which are given ? 
Direct experience of nature, and of man's action upon 
nature is a necessary food of the vivid imagination ; 
without it the greater part of language, thought, and 
life is utterly deficient of reality. We speak of the 
eloquent descriptive powers of a Ruskin, the superb 
analogies of a Browning or an Emerson, as if they 
were acrobatic feats of the creative imagination flying 
in the void ; no such thing ! they are built upon and 
are definitively and naturally linked with direct, close, 
personal observation of, and experiment on, concrete 
facts. The vital realisation of language necessary for f 
the safe and wise conduct of all intellectual processes 
can only be got by laying this solid, physical founda- 
tion of experience. The release of the intellectual life 
from direct and constant contact with the common \ 
processes of the material world, both in early edu- 
cation, and in the false over-specialisation of later 



EDUCATION. 277 

years, is a source of incalculable damage to the nature 
and worth of intellectual work itself. 

§ 13. But if every man and woman must stand with 
feet firmly planted upon the solid earth, their thoughts 
must not be kept to earthy things. If it is hard 
to solidify the pulpy intellectualism of the modern 
school by imparting concrete experience of material 
facts, it is still harder to obtain the subordination of 
both learning and intellectual training to emotional 
purposes, which is Mr. Ruskin's second great deside- 
ratum. Education rooted in nature and manual work 
must grow towards "habits of gentleness and justice." 
The oft-quoted line of Wordsworth ever clearly points 
for him the goal of education, " We live by admiration, 
hope, and love." This is not a sentimental fagon de 
parler, but a literal sentiment of what he means, and 
means with an intensity and worth only to be gauged as 
we understand his capacity for admiring, hoping, and 
loving. Education aims at giving value to life, and the 
real value for individual or for nation is the value of its 
finest quality. From this standpoint, physical education 
is our duty to our bodies, in order that we may 
have accuracy and delicacy of sensations wherewith to 
build objects worthy of admiration and love. So intel- 
lectual education is no more to be regarded as existing 
for its own sake than art for art's sake; we need to 
know truths about nature and man, the best that has 
been thought and said, in order to strengthen and 
inform this life of the soul. 

It is unreasonable to predict that all open-hearted and 
free-minded educationalists will adopt the language of 
Mr. Ruskin regarding the end of education, or will assign 



278 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the dominance which he sometimes assigns to moral 
as distinguished from intellectual or aesthetic ends. The 
appearance of this dominance of morals is sometimes 
forced upon him by the necessities of habitual language 
which, for certain conveniences, distinguishes the good 
from the true and the beautiful. Wherever this dis- 
tinction is assumed as valid, the logical priority is given 
to "the good," as the goal alike of education and of 
life. But this should not mislead us into supposing 
that Mr. Ruskin really harboured any deep-rooted 
Hebraism or specialised puritanism in conceiving the 
nature of " the good " as realised in conduct. His 
goodness of " behaviour " comprises not merely all that 
is conveyed in morality, and is conceived as " duty," but 
all that is excellent in the search for truth and beauty. 
" All literature, art, and science are vain, and worse, if 
they do not enable you to be glad, and glad justly." x 
Such gladness is not even regarded as a natural adjunct, 
something that is added unto us if we follow the path of 
duty. It is an essential aspect of the end, " all educa- 
tion being directed to make yourselves and your children ! 
capable of Honesty and capable of Delight." 2 

Alike in this conception of the starting-point of 
education from Nature and manual work, and of the 
goal, Mr. Ruskin' s views are in close general accord f 
with the best thoughts of the scientific school of educa- ! 
tional reformers. But though in respect for Nature ' 
and for Humanity there is a growing willingness to 
follow these right lines, when the old traditionary bar- \ 
riers can be broken down, it ought to be recognised that " 
the majority even of the most liberal educationalists fall 
i Eagle's Nest, § 177. 2 Time and Tide, § 61. 



EDUCATION. 279 

far short in one important regard. " Habits of gentle- 
I ness and justice " is a phrase of which full meaning is 
| only realised by a clear acceptance of the larger body of 
j Mr. Ruskin's social teaching. This is the real reason 
: why his views upon education must be studied as an 
j essential part of his broad work as social reformer. Our 
. duty towards our neighbour, contained in gentleness 
j and justice, is a barren platitude so long as we ignore 
| the searching analysis of ungentleness and injustice 
j in the existing order of society ; so long as we seek to 
i detach educational reform from the wider and equally 
| radical reforms of industrial and social structure, by 
. which alone " habits of gentleness and justice " can be 
realised in the common life. 

It is idle to think that infusing Sloyd into the 
curriculum of schools, more out-door life, the teaching 
of hygiene, attention to music and elocution, and defi- 
nite instruction in morals — excellent as all these things 
are in humanising education — will be able to bear true 
fruit of just and gentle manners, if we neglect the 
weightier matters of the law of justice and gentleness 
in the organisation of society for the commonwealth. 

§ 14. So much for theory ; but Mr. Ruskin was not 
only a theorist in education. His occupation of the 
Slade Professorship of Fine Arts at Oxford was one 
large liberal experiment in education, by which he 
sought at once to impress the true significance of Fine 
Art, and the obligations of a professor in a seat of 
learning. 

As Mr. Cook has well remarked, 1 Mr. Ruskin illus- 
trated with peculiar felicity the three functions of a 
1 " Studies in Kuskin," by E. T. Cook, p. 38. 



280 JOHN BUSKIN. 

University Professor, — Research, General Instruction, 
and Professional Teaching. Each department he strove 
to liberate from the perfunctory or mechanical character 
which has sterilised so much of the ripest scholarship 
and the profoundest intellect in our universities. With 
honest and accurate work he ever sought to associate 
freedom and delight, and while not infrequently scan- 
dalising the sober dignity of academic personages by the 
wayward humour of his habits and utterances, he did 
more, during the years of his residence, 1 to humanise 
and invigorate the atmosphere of university life than 
any other teacher of his age. Of his special labours 
of research in art history and criticism, and of the 
strictly professional teaching, I need say nothing here, 
except to remind readers that the characteristics of 
his theory were always present in his practice. He 
continually strove to keep the imagination of his hear- 
ers alive to facts by calling in the direct aid of the eye : 
illustration both by models, standard works of art, dia- 
grams, and specimens of every kind was organically 
interwoven with exposition. So again the mind was 
ever kept alert and mobile by fanciful and unexpected 
devices, introduced by way of dramatic emphasis, or to 
carry the listener along the line of analogy to see some 
hidden law of art. Mr. Ruskin was contrasting the way 
in which modern French art looks at the sky with that 
in which Turner saw and drew " the pure traceries of ! 
the vault of morning." " See," he said, " what the French 
artistic imagination makes of it," and a drawing done by j 
Mr. Macdonald from a French handbook was disclosed, ' 

1 First elected, 1870 ; re-elected, 1873 and 1876 ; resigned, 1879 ; 
re-appointed, 1883 ; resigned early in 1885. 



EDUCATION. 281 

showing the clouds grouped into the face of a mocking 
and angry fiend. When the audience had had their 
look and their laugh, Mr. Macdonald modestly pro- 
ceeded to turn his sketch with its back to the wall 
again. "No, no," interposed Mr. Ruskin, "keep it 
there, and it shall permanently remain in your school, 
as a type of the loathsome and lying spirit of defama- 
tion which studies man only in the skeleton and nature 
only in ashes." 1 

But always free and stimulating, Mr. Ruskin was 
strict and even exacting in his demands upon pupils 
who put themselves under his charge for professional 
study. Art was a tender plant in the somewhat aus- 
tere atmosphere of Oxford study, and the rigorous rules 
imposed upon the Ruskin Drawing School chilled the 
incipient zeal of the artistic undergraduate, and even 
when the early rigour was relaxed, his school never 
attained popularity in the University, though Oxford 
ladies soon came to attend in fair numbers. Mr. Ruskin, 
however, incurred much expenditure of labour and of 
money in the carefully arranged collection of drawings 
grouped for various educational purposes, which still 
enrich the Drawing School at Oxford. 

The double purpose of this collection, as indeed the 
double purpose of all his teaching, was, first, to furnish 
standards of criticism, models of the various schools and 
styles of art, for reference in forming taste and judg- 
ment; secondly, to supply the serviceable tools for a 
working School of Art in which pupils were learning 
to produce. Nowhere is the thoroughness and detailed 
originality of Mr. Ruskin's educational method so 
1 Studies in Ruskin, pp. 59, 60. 



282 JOHN BUSKIN. 

finely illustrated as in the equipment of this Drawing 
School. 

His more exoteric teaching, the series of lectures 
given to the Oxford world, and later to the wider read- 
ing world, fulfilled a much larger and more directly 
important function. There was a deep inner propriety 
of time and place in the earnest prophetic voice which, 
from a professorial chair at Oxford, proclaimed a new 
and revolutionary doctrine of art, in protest at once 
against the engrossing commercialism of the outer 
world and the cold-hearted intellectualism which was 
stealing over the intellect of England in her chosen and 
ancient homes of learning. The very attitude of liberty 
he gave himself in the treatment of art savoured of rev- 
olution, and was so regarded by the mediocre respecta- 
bility of the University. That a man told off to deal 
with a special field of culture should trespass freely over 
the fields of neighbouring professors, who were supposed 
to know and teach the desired truths in various sciences, 
histories, and literatures, was a terrible outrage of estab- 
lished order. This rough shaking of academic proprie- 
ties was not one of the least services Mr. Ruskin has 
rendered in his life. The shock was particularly needed, 
for one of the chief intellectual dangers of the age is a 
too precise specialism, which, by sharply marking out 
into carefully defined provinces the domain of learning, 
runs a constant risk of losing the wide standard of hu- 
manity, and cultivating triviality under the false name 
of thoroughness. Mr. Buskin's discursiveness may, per- 
haps, have been over-emphasised, but it served as a 
wholesome and much needed protest. Moreover, he 
rightly felt that one of the most urgent needs in art 



EDUCATION. 283 

education was a recognition of the place which Fine Art 
holds in the general education of life. The relation of 
Art to Literature, to Science, to Morals was, therefore, 
to him not merely a legitimate but the most vitally 
important theme ; and the great service of his Oxford 
teaching, alike for Art and for Humanity, consists in the 
persistent enforcement of this teaching. 

His conviction of the deep importance of free personal 
intercourse between teacher and taught, so often dwelt 
upon in "Fors," was illustrated by his own example. 
Not a few of our most influential writers and artists 
came under the spell of his personality during these 
years, for Mr. Ruskin retained, like many great teach- 
ers, even amid the physical infirmity of increasing age, 
the charm and brilliancy of youth, the quality of direct 
and spontaneous sympathy with the needs and spirits 
of the young. Not merely in his own field of activity, 
wide as that was, did his influence appear ; no one was 
more eager for the honour and welfare of the University. 
At the same time, that certain spirit of reaction, which 
made him the relentless enemy of liberalism in every 
shape, haunted him also in Oxford, the most mediaeval 
and conservative of places. It came under the guise of 
opposition to science. Mr. Ruskin, though of many 
sciences he had more than a smattering, was never fair 
to scientific men or to their methods. The rapid prog- 
ress of the physical sciences frightened him, and he 
foresaw under the unchecked sway of the scientist a 
mechanical life of the mind corresponding to the me- 
chanical rule of industry. His final severance from 
Oxford was a characteristic expression of this fear. 
A vain struggle against the establishment of a physio- 



284 JOHN BUSKIN. 

logical laboratory, which represented to him the endow- 
ment of vivisection and the desecration at once of the 
sanctity of animal life and of true human purposes in 
science, obliged him to relinquish his attempt to humanise 
Oxford by means of art. 



CHAPTER XL 

woman's place and education. 

§ 1. The essentially right life for woman. § 2. Woman's work 
within and without the home. § 3. Mr. Ruskin's tempera- 
mental bias in the intellectual subordination of women. § 4. 
Historical justification of the struggle for " rights " as a pro- 
visional not a final policy. 

§ 1. To none of the doctrines and practices of modern 
" liberalism " was Mr. Ruskin more vehemently hostile 
than to those which find general expression in " the eman- 
cipation of woman." His resentment to all such move- 
ments was indeed so deep as rarely to find expression in 
his writings. What he has to say in direct criticism is 
condensed into a scathing brevity which never conde- 
scends to reason. In " Fors " he refers to " the enlight- 
ened notion among English young women, derived from 
Mr. J. Stuart Mill, — that the ' career ' of the Madonna 
is too limited a one, and that modern political economy 
can provide them . . . with < much more lucrative occu- 
pations than that of nursing the baby.' " 2 " Arrows of 
the Chace " also contains a brief letter to a Swiss jour- 
nal which contains the same uncompromising testimony : 
" Je ne puis trouver des termes assez forts pour exprimer 
la haine et le me'pris que je ressens pour l'ide*e moderne 
qu'une femme doit cesser d'etre mere, fille ou femme 

iFors, Letter 497 (i. xxiv). 
285 



286 JOHN BUSKIN. 

pour qu'clle puisse devenir commis ou ingdnieur." 1 Of 
women's suffrage he is far too contemptuous to discuss 
it. The position of woman was one of his most abso- 
lutely fixed principles through life, connected as it was 
with the central idea of home. A woman was to be pri- 
marily a useful, secondarily a beautiful, home-maker and 
home-keeper. 

Occasionally Mr. Ruskin expresses himself in un- 
qualified language, which seems to sanction the idea of 
drudgery or the narrow position of an average haus-frau 
in the middle classes of society to-day. For instance, he 
declares that " the essentially right life for all woman- 
kind is that of the Swiss paysanne." 2 But then he 
partly idealised that life, as he saw it through the glasses 
of the Swiss novelist Gotthelf, or as brightened by ro- 
mantic memory, and partly he designed to offer a dra- 
matic protest against the notion of frivolity and use- 
lessness which he saw to inhere in the English idea of 
" ladyhood." He did not really mean that all women 
were to be farmers' wives like the heroine of " Ulric the 
Farm Servant," but that they were all to undertake use- 
ful service in the performance or the superintendence of 
manual labour connected with the life of the home. It 
is because agriculture is to him the basic industry that 
the life of the farmhouse is the type of " the essentially 
right life for all womankind." The testimony of all 
history to the abuse of male physical power, in imposing 
an almost intolerable burden of servile drudgery upon 
the " paysanne," is simply ignored by Mr. Ruskin, who, 
in his idyllic picture of true agricultural life, assumes 
relations of affection and comradeship which would give 
1 Yo\. ii. 224. 2 Fors, Letter xciv. (iv. 455). 



WOMAN'S PLACE. 287 

happiness to any home. While the farmer looks after 
the cattle and the crops, and superintends the outdoor 
labour in the fields, his wife manages the dairy and the 
fowl-yard, and concerns herself with the housework and 
the food supply. Here is a division or co-operation of 
labour imposed by nature and convenience : no trouble- 
some question arises of what is a man's, what a woman's 
work, or of competition between the two. The direct 
ordering of the home and of the industries which gather 
closely around the home is woman's work in every 
well-appointed peasant life. 

§ 2. To all other kinds of life the same general rule 
applies. " Lilies " is written for the women of the well- 
to-do classes ; but, while it does not suppose a farm life, 
it applies the same principles of life. Manual work will 
not there absorb so much attention ; the graces and re- 
finements of life hold larger place, and demand a higher 
intellectual and emotional education. But the same 
central idea is present, woman as the Angel of the 
House, responsible for the making of the home, con- 
cerned with the arts of consumption rather than with 
the arts of production. As in the primitive society man 
goes out to the chase and to the fight, while woman 
tends the hut and the peaceful industries of growing 
and grinding corn, making clothes, etc. ; so in the more 
complex civilisation of to-day, the more arduous and ad- 
venturous work of body or of mind, outside the house, is 
by nature and by moral considerations of utility reserved 
for men. Mr. Ruskin utterly disapproves of women go- 
ing out into the arena of industrial or professional com- 
petition, struggling with men or among themselves for 
wages, profits, and fees. He does not discuss the ques- 



288 JOHN RUSKW. 

tion whether women can or cannot do good work and 
" hold their own " in fair competition of the trades or 
professions, but he deprecates the preference of such 
success to the higher success attainable in the arts of 
home, and the reaction such entering of the competitive 
life will exert upon the character of women. That 
motherhood and the related duties of the home, which 
nature has reserved for women, can either be repudiated 
or treated as a secondary consideration is, in Mr. Rus- 
kin's eyes, the most pernicious doctrine which can be 
preached to women. It not only ignores the true laws 
of economy of effort, by belittling the importance and 
difficulties of the home arts, but, more fatal still, it mis- 
interprets the differences of sex character which domi- 
nate the issue. " The man's power is active, progressive, 
defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the 
discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for specula- 
tion and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, 
and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever con- 
quest necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, 
not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or 
creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and de- 
cision." 1 Within the sacred circle of the home, guarded 
against the coarseness, the selfishness, and cruelty of the 
outside life, woman is to queen it, as " the centre of 
order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty." 
There is a certain poetic vagueness, a certain lack of 
substance and actuality in the eloquent description of 
woman's place in " Lilies," and the simple answer given 
to a correspondent through " Fors " is more directly 
instructive. " Woman's work is : I. To please people. 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 67. 



WOMAN'S PLACE. 289 

To feed them in dainty ways. III. To clothe them. 
V. To keep them orderly. V. To teach them." l Here, 
further explanation, it is suggested that "young 
| ladies " shall practise plain cooking, dressmaking (a sew- 
jing-machine is here sanctioned!), ironing, etc., a little 
| housemaid's work, spare minutes of gardening (have 
inothing to do with hothouses !), and reading books that 
I are owned, not borrowed. This furnishes a solid mate- 
rial basis of work, upon which the more refined arts and 
I graces required to enable her " to sympathise in her 
| husband's pleasures, and in those of his best friends," 
j may be engrafted. The public function accorded to her 
I is not the franchise or the sitting on elected bodies, but 
the overflow of charity beyond the limits of the home, 
the personal offices of affection and care bestowed upon 
neighbours. 

§3. The whole trend of woman's education is 
! designed to conform to this conception of her place 
| and power. But the eloquent passages of " Lilies " 
which sketch this education betray a certain tempera- 
mental basis, which justifies critics in affirming that Mr. 
Ruskin preaches the subordination of women. In the 
division of functions to accord with natural powers 
and social convenience, there is nothing to warrant the 
ascription of superior value to one sex or the other ; 
indeed, no basis of comparison is possible. We can 
only say that the two kinds of work are equally essen- 
tial to the organic life of a family and a society ; the 
work of ordering the home and the arts of home con- 
sumption are just as skilled, just as serviceable, as the 
work in which man is to engage. It is only when we 
1 Fors, Letter xlvi. (ii. 444). 



290 JOHN BUSKIN. 

come to consider the intellectual life, and the education 
for it, that Mr. Ruskin offends the sense of equality by' 
a subordination of the woman to the man. The useful 
and necessary distinction between thought and feeling is 
driven to a dangerous falsehood of extremes when we are 
told that woman is not " to think for herself," but tha^ 
man is to be the thinker : the influence of moral good^ j 
ness and wisdom accorded to her as her supreme gifti 
cannot compensate for this denial of the rights of intel-i 
lect. To say that excessive devotion to the intellectual ! 
struggle for truth, as to the industrial struggle fo^i 
wealth, may be more injurious to a nature not made 
for combat than it is to man's nature, follows consist 
tently from the different characters accorded by Mr. 
Ruskin to the sexes. But to deny freedom of thought 
to women, to insist upon making their cultivation of the 
understanding only a means to the exercise of sympathy^ 
is a sin against their individuality. A man may pursue 
knowledge for itself as a part of the perfection of his 
nature, as well as for the social services it enables himi 
to perform. Not so a woman. " All such knowledge I 
should be given her as may enable her to understand, 
and even to aid the work of men ; and yet it should 
be given, not as knowledge, not as if it were or could be 
an object for her to know, but only to feel and to, 
judge." 1 Now it is possible for Mr. Ruskin to main-! 
tain that knowledge shall not be described as an end in 
itself, any more than art ; but to make the knowledge of 
a woman subordinate, not to her own wider conduct 
of life, but to the work of a man, is to impose intellec- 
tual serfdom. Without impugning Mr. Ruskin's con- 
1 Lilies, §72. 



WOMAN'S PLACE. 291 

ception of the place of woman in the home, I find it 
impossible to accept his statement that " it is of no 
moment to her own worth or dignity that she should 
be acquainted with this science or that." What is de- 
manded is surely not that subordination of intellectual 
life which consciously estimates learning either by the 
food it offers to the emotions in general, or by its 
special service in enabling a wife to sympathise with 
her husband's thoughts, but that organic co-operation of 
intellectual and emotional life which makes a rich and 
roundly formed individuality in a woman as in a man. 
If, as Mr. Ruskin assumes, woman's special influence 
lies through the emotions, the education of these facul- 
ties must have more importance accorded to them ; but 
that does not warrant us in impairing the good cultiva- 

| tion of those intellectual powers which are required to 
co-operate with the emotions in every act of judgment, 
by consciously regarding knowledge as a means. The 
intellectual life, so far as it is cultivated, must be culti- 
vated as directly contributory to the worth of woman- 
hood. Otherwise woman cannot exercise wisely and 
effectively that controlling influence in the family which 
Mr. Ruskin would accord to her. Apart from this in- 
tellectual subjection of women, his general scheme of 
education, rooted in physical freedom and joy, and feed- 
ing the imagination and the sympathies with all that is 
best and most beautiful in nature, in art, and literature, 
is rich in suggestiveness and in liberality of treatment. 
It may even be admitted that his precept, that while 
women may learn everything which men learn they 
must learn them differently, flows consistently from his 

I premises. There is a subtlety of wisdom, drawn from 



2V2 JOHN RUSKIN. 

personal experiences, in his express prohibition of 
theology, as fraught with peculiar danger to women, 
in view of a natural tendency to " complacently and 
pridefully bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them, 
whatever arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehen- 
siveness, into one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh." 1 

§ 4. Mr. Ruskin's views regarding women must not 
be set aside lightly as " old-fashioned." The oldness of 
the fashion was indeed to him a powerful testimony to 
their natural rightness. But neither here nor on any 
other matter was he a thoughtless conservative. The 
position he assigns to women fits in his organic concep- 
tion of society as truly as the social and industrial grades 
which he desiderates. It belongs to the perpetual and 
soulful protest against the liberating and the levelling 
tendencies of thought and practice, based upon a shallow 
philosophy of natural rights, which found in the equal 
self-assertion of all individuals the basis of a well-har- 
monised mechanical society. " Let women fight it out 
with men in a fair field and no favour " is a logical im- 
plication of the laissez faire philosophy. Those who 
regard society as an elaborate mechanical structure, 
built upon individual rights, naturally take this view, 
and consider society will be best served by competition 
of the sexes. Those who, like Mr. Ruskin, regard 
society as an organic, not a mechanical, unity, insist 
that a free fight between the separate molecules will not 
produce that unity, but that, on the contrary, the organic 
nature imposes, with all the weight of central authority, 
a serviceable division of labour and life upon the parts. 

How comes it, then, that so many professed Socialists 
1 Sesame and Lilies, § 73. 



WOMAN'S PLACE. 293 

are staunch advocates of the " rights of women," as one 
of the main factors in the movement of social progress ? 
It is not difficult to answer this question. It arises 
from an important fact of modern life which Mr. Rus- 
kin and the Comtists, who take the same general lines 
upon " the woman question," conveniently ignore. The 
" emancipation of women " is a just provisional arrange- 
ment. If economic justice had been won, or were in 
speedy course of being won, and an ideal society were 
visibly rising, in which there would be a settled place 
for every man and woman, with secure livelihood, as a 
member of a working family, the struggle for the rights 
of women might be as foolish and injurious a thing as 
Mr. Ruskin and Auguste Comte maintained it was. But, 
with the slow change of human heart and human actions, 
we are confronted not merely with the necessity of work- 
ing towards ideals of society, but with the need of pallia- 
tives for terrible existing evils. Now the oppression of 
the individuality of women by man-laid laws and customs, 
created and supported by brutal force, is everywhere a 
corrupting influence in wholesome family life. Women 
have not that place and power which Mr. Ruskin finds 
for them in the idealised Swiss peasant life, or in the 
cultured and comfortable class life of " Sesame and 
Lilies," and because they have it not, they cannot exer- 
cise those educative and ennobling influences upon the 
young to which Mr. Ruskin, like all true reformers, 
looks as the primum mobile of efficient social progress. 
Moreover, the very economic conditions, against which 
Mr. Ruskin wages war, present a flat contradiction to 
the assumption that every woman is made for mother- 
hood and the guardianship of a home. It is the large 



294 JOHN BUSKIN. 

proportion of women who, in a monogamic society, are ji 
superfluous for motherhood, and whom the present in- \ 
dustrial conditions drive to the necessity of seeking a p 
livelihood in competitive industry, whose cause stands in f 
the forefront of the battle for liberty and rights of S 
equal competition. Under present circumstances, this 
battle for liberty is true progress, and not the retrogres- 
sive policy which it would be in the face of a speedy : 
realisation of an ideal new order. The stress upon f 
liberty and rights is not essentially an evil thing. Old j 
tyrannies must be crushed, old wrongs undone ; this \ 
destructive policy is historically sound, and is both 
necessary to and continuous with the growth of a new 
organic process of construction. The revolutionary ii 
movement of the eighteenth century was not wrong in P 
taking liberty and equality for its watchwords : the « 
breaking down of the old trade restrictions, the law of '$ 
settlement and the various chains which fettered the 
free action of capitalist and labourer in commerce, the 
destruction of ancient and obsolete privileges and j 
authority in politics, — these things were necessary to 
the shaping of those new ideas and that new order ' 
which Mr. Ruskin strove to forward. But in this move- j 
ment of liberty men had taken too narrow a basis of i 
action ; this is why the liberation of women has lingered 
so far behind, that it seems to Mr. Ruskin, and to not a j 
few others, the injurious survival of an obsolete view of 
life. This is not the case. The negative freedom, even 
the freedom to vote and to compete which women seek, 
they rightly seek in the just order of historical develop- 
ment ; it is their belated share of eighteenth century 
progress. Such freedom is only injurious where it is 



WOMAN'S PLACE. 295 

interpreted as a sufficient end : where no such finality 
is read into it, and it is regarded as a means of educa- 
tion and activity, needed to enable women to bear their 
I proper part in the evolution of a sound industrial society, 
it is seen to lie along the right road of progress. Mr. 
jRuskin set his eyes so earnestly upon a distant ideal 
that he refused to make the true allowance for historical 
j processes. If the just spiritual relation of the sexes 
I which he craves existed now, and the family, at any 
irate, was founded in affection and cheerful co-operation, 
the movements which Mr. Ruskin deplores would rightly 
be deplorable ; but in the actual relations of women to 
society, even the unsexing which he deprecates, with all 
the self-assertion and the hardening which it brings, is 
necessitated alike by the wrongs of the present and the 
hopes and needs of the future. If some of the bellig- 
erent advocates of women's rights regard emancipation 
as an end, and competition of the sexes for all trades 
i and professions as a permanent and desirable factor in 
\ social order, it is only because the dust and perturbation 
of the present struggle has blinded them, as it blinded 
many of the keenest thinkers and the bravest fighters 
for male liberty in the last generation. 



CHAPTER XII. 

INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS — THE GUILD OP ST. GEORGE. 



' 



§ 1. The practice of fair dealing. § 2. Mr. Kuskin's use of ren 
and interest. § 3. Mr. Kuskin, publisher and bookseller. 1 
§ 4. The origin and principles of St. George's Company. 
§ 5. Experiments in agricultural reform. § 6. The Ruskin 
Museum at Sheffield. § 7. Revival of hand-spinning and weav- 
ing. § 8. The Home Arts and Industries Association. 



. 



§ 1. As in education so in other matters Mr. Ruski 
was eager to practise what he preached. But in prac- 
tice he drew a just distinction between what is ulti- 
mately desirable, and what is now practically serviceable.! 
Though he understood quite well that justice is unattain 
able in modern commercial transactions, he did not, asj 
a few have done, determine to have nothing to do with 
buying and selling, and " to come out of the whole 
affair." Here he was a teacher, drawing professional 
salaries, a maker and seller of books, a specialist 
buyer of pictures and other art treasures, as well as 
a purchaser and consumer of general commodities] 
What did common sense, enlightened by honesty, re- 
quire of him? Certainly not to give up buying pic- 
tures and selling books, for these were among his most 
serviceable functions to society. In his later years, at 
any rate, having given away, or put to other social 
use, his paternal inheritance, he could not fulfil his art 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 297 

mission otherwise than by selling books. Mr. Ruskin 
was no believer in an ascetic doctrine of self-renuncia- 
tion, but in a life of honest and delightful self-expression 
attainable for all. Had he refused to sell his books and 
teaching, he would in no sense have illustrated his sane 
theory of life. He was no disbeliever in commerce and 
exchange. What he sought to do was to deal fairly 
with others, as bookseller, as owner of houses and other 
property, and as buyer of goods and services. His 
method of buying he explains in the beginning of " Unto 
this Last," as illustrated in the case of domestic service. 
He did not make labourers compete against one another 
so as to get his labour at the lowest market price, but 
fixed what he regarded as a reasonable wage, such wage 
as would enable the worker to do his work in comfort 
and with good-will towards his master, and chose the 
best labour available at this price. This was the theory 
of sound wages, which he preached and practised, not 
only in the treatment of domestic servants and other 
workers whom he employed directly, but in the indirect 
processes of buying commodities, by which also he 
exercised power over men. If a picture was offered 
him at a price he considered fair, and he had the means 
to buy it, he paid the price ; if he made an offer, it was 
not the lowest offer which he thought might be accepted, 
but one which he thought to represent the present value : 
bargaining he utterly eschewed. It may be forcibly 
urged that, when one abandons the arbitrament of the 
market, no true standard of " fairness " in price or wages 
remains. This criticism is strictly valid, and yet it does 
not prevent us from tempering the harshness of market 
competition in particular cases, and in applying a rough 



298 JOHN BUSKIN. 

personal standard of justice. The appointment of most 
highly skilled officials, as we have seen, implies the legit- 
imacy of such a standard, and the claim of Mr. Ruskin 
that it should be substituted everywhere for unchecked 
competition is one which he sought to enforce in all his 
private dealings. 

§ 2. He fully recognised that this was a very rough 
approximation to justice, but it was all that the time and 
conditions render possible to the individual who cannot, 
however much he strive, " come out of the whole affair." 
In conformity with this true principle of compromise, 
Mr. Ruskin, even after he recognised the economic and 
moral wrong of rent and interest, took his rents and 
defended the action. His present obligation was to be 
a good landlord, and for this purpose, in 1864, he en- 
listed the help of Miss Octavia Hill, who helped him to 
attempt improvements in working-class dwellings on his 
property in Marylebone and other parts of London. 
Later on he sold to Miss Hill his London property. 
The proceeds of the sale, several thousand pounds, 
seem to have gone the way of nearly all the means he 
had inherited. It was no theory of his, as we have 
seen, that he should give away all the money which he 
had not earned. Yet, in fact, that seems to have been 
done, and even more. If we take account of the various 
large sums expended upon philanthropic and educa- 
tional schemes, we shall find that the great bulk of 
his inherited property and his earnings went in these 
ways. A full and interesting account of the larger 
items of this expenditure is given in Letter lxxvi. of 
"Fors," from which it appears that of the fortune of 
£ 157, 000, with certain houses and lands besides, which 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 299 

formed his inheritance, almost the whole of the money 
had been expended by 1877, while plans were already 
formed disposing in advance of considerable further 
sums derivable from the remaining property and current 
earnings. It is, indeed, impossible to allocate, out of 
the free but by no means lavish expenditure of a directly 
personal kind, which Mr. Ruskin admits, the proportion 
which is really and finally spent upon himself ; for travel 
and art purchases, which expressed his most expensive 
tastes, were yet capital in the fuller and more liberal 
sense. The common phrase, " There were no limits to 
his generosity," was literally true of Mr. Ruskin ; no man 
of means ever treated his money more in the spirit of a 
public trust, and none ever administered that trust more 
wisely. To some who have followed closely his modes 
of outlay this latter statement may seem dubious, but 
Mr. Ruskin rightly understood that many of his schemes 
were risky experiments, and he also understood that even 
an experiment which fails may be a wise expenditure of 
money and effort. 

§ 3. Before describing the largest of these experi- 
ments, it will be well to illustrate Mr. Ruskin' s com- 
mercial dealings by brief reference to his conduct as 
bookseller. For the greater part of his literary life he 
held full control over the making and selling of his 
books, and imposed conditions both on their produc- 
tion and their sale which were in strict conformity with 
his conceptions of honesty and industry. To put a 
thoroughly sound article into the hands of those who 
wanted it for use at a reasonable price, without impos- 
ing injurious physical or moral conditions upon the 
labourers employed, and without employing advertise- 



300 JOHN BUSKIN. 

ments, or middlemen, or any of the arts of competition 
and self-recommendation commonly in vogue, such was 
the problem. To meet these requirements, it was essen- 
tial to trust no process to ordinary commerce. The 
earlier books were indeed published in the usual method, 
chiefly by Messrs. Smith & Elder, but in 1872 Mr. 
Ruskin began the experiment with Mr. George Allen, 
which was destined to have such important and lasting 
results. He had long kicked against the abatement and 
discount system practised by publishers and booksellers, 
and engaged Mr. Allen to sell " Fors Clavigera," which 
was first printed by Messrs. Smith & Elder. Mr. Allen 
was then adopted as joint publisher with Messrs. Smith 
& Elder for the Revised Series of Mr. Ruskin's works, 
and after 1873 the entire publishing was placed in his 
hands. Mr. Allen, an engraver by trade, was himself a 
pupil of Mr. Ruskin, and close personal relations have 
always subsisted between them, Mr. Ruskin, especially 
in the earlier years of the experiment, taking an active 
part in the direction of the business. The first thing to 
secure was sound material and wholesome skilled pro- 
cesses. Hand-made paper was often used, and in all 
cases special attention was given both to paper and to 
type. To the preparation and printing of the plates the 
most extraordinary care was habitually devoted to secure 
thorough and honest work. The printing itself was 
done by Messrs. Hazell, Watson, & Yiney at Aylesbury, 
where every regard was paid to the health and comfort 
of the workers, as well as to the excellence of the work 
done. But the most interesting experiment, both in its 
industrial and its financial aspects, was the publishing | 
business, conducted for so many years by Messrs. Allen 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 301 

at the little country village of Orpington, in Kent. 
There, in the back garden of Mr. Allen's private house, 
stood the warehouse, which contained the stock of Mr. 
Ruskin's books. For many years all these books were 
supplied to readers direct from Orpington without the 
interposition of any retail bookseller's profits. In other 
words, a private reader could get his single volume from 
Messrs. Allen upon the same terms as were given to a 
large retailer who took dozens. Mr. Ruskin was strongly 
opposed to all unacknowledged profits, and to the differ- 
ences of real and nominal prices brought about by com- 
petition. A known, fixed, fair price for a sound and 
tasteful book was the principle from which he never 
willingly departed. At Orpington, not only the publish- 
ing in retail was accomplished, but much skilled work 
of engraving. Since no credit beyond the barest neces- 
sary limit was allowed and his prices were high, the 
success of this novel business was extraordinary. For 
a long time the powerful objection which Mr. Ruskin 
entertained for cheap literature, and the costly methods 
of production required by his aesthetic and economic 
principles, were a real grievance against him in the eyes 
of the larger public. In the case of "Fors," a work 
destined for all sorts and conditions of men lying far 
outside the range of his art public, the influence of Mr. 
Ruskin must have been greatly impaired by his refusal 
to use advertisement and retail booksellers. How many 
working men would be likely to forward at irregular 
intervals their 7d. or lOd. — the price was raised after 
1874 — to an unknown person in a Kentish village in 
order to buy a pamphlet with an obscure Latin title, 
though it was designed particularly for their benefit? 



302 JOHN BUSKIN. 

Nothing, it may be said, except the rich inherent merits 
of the books would have enabled them to make their 
way, neglecting not merely all the more pushful modes i 
of competition, but even the legitimate publicity of the 
retail counter. Not until, relenting in his later years, 
and recognising that considerable cheapness of produc- 
tion was now consistent with sound work, he came 
to sanction the cheaper editions of his books which, ,! 
beginning with " Sesame and Lilies," have at length 
embraced most of his important works, did the influence | 
of Mr. Ruskin's revolutionary teaching begin to tell | 
upon the larger thinking public. So long as the ordi- 
nary volumes cost 13s. unbound, and the illustrated 
ones 22s. 6d., it was impossible that their ownership 
should transcend the " upper and the undistressed middle 
classes." The more recent arrangements of publication, 
while abiding by Mr. Ruskin's principles in the main, 
have departed in some important particulars. The | 
removal to London of Messrs. Allen's publishing house, 
the allowance of a fixed discount to the trade, the use j 
of ordinary methods of advertisement, have doubtless 
enhanced enormously the sale of Mr. Ruskin's books. 
How far Mr. Ruskin is thoroughly reconciled to these : 
departures from his more primitive methods we can- 1 
not say, but the new arrangement entered in 1886 with 
his publisher, whereby the latter sells his works for i 
proportionate profits, doubtless implied a larger liberty 
to adopt ordinary business methods. 

§ 4. The largest of Mr. Ruskin's practical schemes 
of reform consists in the work of the St. George's 
Company, or Guild, as it was commonly called after 
1877. This work is intimately connected with " Fors 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 303 

Clavigera," which had as one of its chief direct aims its 
establishment. In the first letter of " Fors " he lays 
stress upon the need of clearing himself from all sense of 
responsibility by forwarding a practical proposal to deal 
with the material distress around him, and in the fifth 
letter he gives a brief but well-defined account of the 
scheme he had in mind. For many years he had been 
preaching two great economic and moral truths, " that 
food can only be got out of the ground, and happiness 
only out of honesty," and he was anxious to demon- 
strate the feasibility of an experiment upon these lines. 
The fundamental position of agriculture as the basis 
of national life impressed him with ever greater force 
precisely because the spirit of the age was against it, 
and was driving the agricultural population from a 
healthy and useful life upon their native soil into the 
noxious atmosphere of the large industrial towns, to 
engage in a wild, wasteful, and. selfish struggle for 
existence. The work of St. George's Company was 
first designed as a practical protest against this demor- 
alising tendency. To raise a fund in order to buy some 
land which should be cultivated by manual labour, 
with as little (water-driven) machinery as possible, 
worked thoroughly so as to bear the fullest increase, 
the labourers to be paid fixed and sufficient wages, 
to live in cottages of their own, with sound education 
for their children upon Ruskinian lines, and every 
opportunity of wholesome recreation for themselves, 
was the scheme as it took early shape. The fund itself 
was to serve the purpose of a noble charity, an act 
of higher justice by which persons of means might 
contribute a tithe of their annual income to the salva- 



304 JOHN BUSKIN. 

tion of society. As " Fors " advanced, so the practical 
scheme took wider character ; idle hands were to be 
set upon reclaiming barren soil, townfolk were to be 
invited to return " back to the soil," young couples of 
the higher classes, who were willing to accept a rough 
life, were to be welcomed. There was to be a skilled 
overseer appointed by the Trust, the tenants were to 
build houses for themselves under certain restrictions, 
and were to own the full produce of the land, except 
the tithe which they should pay to the Guild fund. By 
1874 a considerable industrial side was added to the 
proposed experiment, an artisan class was to be ap- 
pended, carpenters and smiths, etc., so that the society 
should be as far as possible completely self-sufficing for 
all ordinary purposes. As the plan matured in his 
mind and in the pages of "Fors," it became more 
ambitious until it grew into a pattern of the elaborate 
ideal society described in " Time and Tide," with a 
master and marshals under him, and under them the 
resident landlords, who should control districts, and be 
responsible for the tenantry, tradesmen, and labourers. 2 
Thus was the work of the Company of St. George from 
a small beginning upon a few acres of land expanded 
into a copy of the New Feudalism. 

The Company itself existed primarily to " float " and 
" finance " this scheme ; it was not expected that the 
Companions should be tenants or workers under the 
scheme ; advice, good-will, and a tithe were to be their 
contribution. 

But as the idea took fuller shape in Mr. Ruskin's 
mind, the Company itself, as a spiritual brotherhood 
1 Fors, Letter lviii. 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 305 

! of persons determined to live an honest life and serve 
their fellows, grew into a powerful interest, and its 
rules and constitution were carefully thought out. The 
solemn declaration which a Companion of the Guild 
was called upon to sign is an important document, in 
that it contains in bold relief the leading essentials of 
the art of a true and honest life, as Mr. Ruskin con- 
ceived them, thus denning the spiritual forces upon 
which he relied for social deliverance. 

The " statement of creed and resolution " runs as 
follows : 1 

" I. I trust in the living God, Father Almighty, Maker 
of heaven and earth, and of all things and creatures, 
visible and invisible. 

" I trust in the kindness of His law, and the goodness 
of His work. 

" And I will strive to love Him, and keep His law, 
and see His work while I live. 

" II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the 
majesty of its faculties, the fullness of its mercy, and 
the joy of its love. 

"And I will strive to love my neighbour as myself, 
and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did. 

" III. I will labour, with such strength and oppor- 
tunity as God gives me, for my own daily bread ; and all 
that my hand finds to do, I will do with all my might. 

" IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any 

human being for my gain or pleasure ; nor hurt, or 

| cause to be hurt, any human being for my gain or 

pleasure ; nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any human 

being for my j^ain or pleasure. 

1 Letter lviii. 



306 JOHN BUSKIN. 

" V. 1 will not kill or hurt any living creature need- 
lessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing ; but will strive! 
to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and 
perfect all natural beauty, upon the earth. 

" VI. I will strive to raise my own body and soul 
daily into all the higher powers of duty and happiness ; 
not in rivalship or contention with others, but for the 
help, delight, and honour of others, and for the joy and; 
peace of my own life. 

" VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faith-i 
fully, and the orders of its monarch, and of any personsi 
appointed to be in authority under its monarch, so far as; 
such laws or commands are consistent with what I sup- 
pose to be the law of God ; and when they are not, or 
seem in anywise to need change, I will oppose them 
loyally and deliberately, not with malicious, concealed 
or disorderly violence. 

"VIII. And with the same faithfulness, and under! 
the limits of the same obedience, which I render to the> 
laws of my country, and the commands of its rulers, Ij 
will obey the laws of the Society, called of St. George,: i 
into which I am this day received ; and the orders of its 
masters, and of all persons appointed to be in authority 
under its masters, so long as I remain a Companion,! 
called of St. George." 1 

§ 5. " Fors Clavigera " enables us to follow the course! 

1 It is interesting to compare this Confession of Faith with that 
of Mazzini set forth in his "Faith and the Future" (Essays of 
Mazzini, edited by Bolton King [Dent & Co.], pp. 74-77), where the 
same trust in God and Humanity is realised in a fuller and more 
scientific conception of human progress with less reference to 
purely personal conduct, and with more dependence upon 
organised political and other social activity. 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 307 

I of the early history of St. George's Company, especially 
I upon its financial side, with considerable minuteness. 
|| This history is at once interesting testimony to the 
Ij pertinacity of Mr. Ruskin and to the extreme reluctance 
of the not inconsiderable number of professing followers 
and admirers to translate their following and their 
admiration into terms of cash in aid of this great social 
experiment. Mr. Ruskin, himself, lost no time in seek- 
ing to establish financial confidence by providing for the 
payment of his tithe, though he bargained at the outset 
that some £ 5,000, out of the £ 14,000 represented by 
the tithe, should be devoted to a related scheme for 
establishing a Mastership for Drawing at Oxford. The 
sum thus earmarked for St. George's Company in July, 
1871, was no less than <£ 10,000,* though for certain 
good reasons the amount actually paid from this source 
seems to have amounted to <£7,000. 2 Sir Thomas Dyke 
Acland and the Right Hon. W. Cowper Temple were 
appointed the first trustees of the fund, though not iden- 
tified with the approval or execution of the schemes 
involved. But the " generous public " hung back, and 
in May of the next year Mr. Ruskin complains some- 
what mournfully of the lack of volunteers in his St. 
George's war. "Not a human creature, except a per- 
sonal friend or two, for mere love of me, has answered," 3 
though next month he records the receipt of £30, " the 
first money sent me by a stranger." 4 

After three years " begging for money " he had 

1 Fors, Letter viii. (i. 156). 

2 Fors, Letter xii. (i. 228.) £2,000 extra were apparently ex- 
pended on series of drawings for the Oxford School (Fors, iii. 2). 
3 Fors, Letter xvii. (i. 332.) 4 Fors, Letter xix. (i. 382). 



308 JOHN RUSKIN. 

obtained " upwards of two hundred pounds," and makes 
the characteristic observation, " Had I been a swindler 
the British public would delightfully have given me two 
hundred thousand pounds instead of two hundred, of 
which I might have returned them, by this time, say, 
the quarter in dividends ; spent a hundred and fifty 
thousand pleasantly, myself, at the rate of fifty thousand 
a year ; and announced, in this month's report, with 
regret, the failure of my project, owing to the unprec- 
edented state of commercial affairs induced by strikes, 
unions, and other illegitimate combinations among the 
workmen." 1 

The account he presents of the total receipts of sub- 
scriptions during four years up to the close of 1874 
includes a total sum of £370, 7s., contributed by twenty- 
four persons mostly in the form of gifts, only seven per- 
sons having enrolled themselves as annual subscribers. 2 
The total funds then stood at .£7,000 in stocks and £923 
in the bank account, practically the whole of which was 
contributed by Mr. Ruskin himself. Under these cir- 
cumstances he did not hasten his experiment ; he had 
no intention whatever of sinking his capital in a large 
purchase of land for founding a communist colony, as 
not a few of his readers seemed to imagine. He wished 
for the present to utilise only the interest upon the 
funds for current expenses, until he should have obtained 
more money and more helpers. Not until late in 1875 
did the Company take action, and then upon a very 
humble scale. A private friend, Mrs. Talbot, had pre- 
sented three acres of rock and moor at Barmouth, with 
eight rickety cottages which swallowed up their rents in 

1 Fors, Letter xxxvi. (ii. 261). 2 Fors, Letter xlviii. (ii. 497). 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 309 

repairs, hardly a hopeful cradle of agricultural reform. 
Nothing seems to have come of this, but in 1877 a some- 
what more ambitious scheme was set on foot. At the 
suggestion of Mr. Swan, a former pupil at the Working 
Man's College, and at this time curate of the museum at 
Sheffield, Mr. Ruskin met a little circle of professed 
communists at Sheffield, and, though they remained out- 
side the Guild, he was persuaded to assist them to try 
the experiment of a community. For this purpose the 
Guild purchased a farm of some fourteen acres of land 
named Abbeydale, at Dore, just outside Sheffield, for 
a price of £2,287, with an arrangement that the com- 
munists should pay back the money, without interest, 
in instalments, within seven years, at the expiration of 
which period they should be owners of the land. 

From the very beginning the experiment seems to have 
been a failure, as, indeed, might have been predicted. 
No notion is more fatuous than the quite common one 
that since labour and land are the prime requisites 
for the maintenance of life, any labour put on any land 
can earn for the labourers a sufficient livelihood. These 
communists had neither the requisite knowledge, the 
requisite capital, or even any serious intention of work- 
ing the land by their own labour. No solid attempt was 
made to establish a community, and after some endeavour 
to organise the working of the land under more efficient 
outside management, the bulk of the " communists " 
resigned and the Guild found itself saddled with the land. 

Several other bits of land came gradually into the 
possession of the Guild. In 1877 Mr. George Baker, 
then Mayor of Birmingham, gave twenty acres of wood- 
land in the prettiest part of Worcestershire. A little 



310 JOHN RUSK IN. 

later, the Guild also obtained possession of a little estate, 
Cloughton, near Scarborough, consisting of a couple of 
acres and a cottage. But while all these remained the 
property of the Guild, they were quite unsuitable even 
for a nucleus of important agricultural reforms, and in 
fact very little was done in this direction. 

Frequent attacks of ill-health which came upon him 
during the period covered by "Fors," and which, as 
the eighties advanced, deprived him of the ability to 
undertake the steady pursuit of any new enterprise, | 
kept these agricultural experiments in embryo. Had f 
Mr. Ruskin's influential friends afforded him the faith ■ 
and the practical support which he once expected, some 
serviceable results might have been obtained ; but vir- 
tually the whole burden of the work had fallen upon 
him, and with his collapse of health it came to a stand- ' 
still. The failure seems to have been recognised by Mr. • 
Ruskin himself as early as 1884, for, in the " Master's 
Report " issued for that year, he alludes to the causes of 
delay, and suggests that he " may probably have to be- [ 
queath to the succeeding master the prosecution of the 
objects of the Guild in that direction." 

Though the Guild retains in its possession several 
pieces of land, the ownership of which is still vested in 
two trustees, nothing is being done to carry out the 
designs of Mr. Ruskin. In fact, it would be quite im- 
possible without far larger resources, both of land and 
money, to conduct an experiment which should properly 
embody the essentials of Mr. Ruskin's plan with any 
prospect of success. 

§ 6. The most serviceable outcome of the work of I 
the Guild is the Ruskin Museum at Sheffield. No one f 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 311 

who bears in mind the part assigned to ocular demon- 
stration in his scheme of education will undervalue the 
importance of this unique experiment. It had long 
been a design of Mr. Ruskin to furnish an exemplar 
of the true museum as a treasury of art and a means 
; of delight and instruction in the finer sorts of human 
work. Having acquired a piece of land at Walkley, 
| two miles from Sheffield, with a cottage upon it, Mr. 
s Ruskin in 1875 chose this for the first home of his 
; museum. In Letter lix. of "Fors" he explains why 
j Sheffield, the most uncompromising and most irredeem- 
i able of steam towns, is yet the most suitable location 
' for the first of St. George's schools. 

" Of such science, art, and literature as are prop- 
erly connected with husbandry, St. George primarily 
acknowledges the art which provides him with a plough- 
share, — and if need still be for those more savage 
instruments, — with spear, sword, and armour. 

" Therefore, it is fitting that of his schools < for the 
workmen and labourers of England,' the first should be 
placed in Sheffield. . . . 

" Besides this merely systematic and poetical fitness, 

there is the farther practical reason for our first action 

being among this order of craftsmen in England ; that 

in cutler's ironwork, we have, at this actual epoch of 

our history, the best in its kind done by English hands, 

unsurpassable, I presume, when the workman chooses 

to do all he knows, by that of any living nation." 

To this he adds elsewhere the further reason that 

I " Sheffield is in Yorkshire, and Yorkshire is yet in the 

main temper of its inhabitants Old English, and capable, 

! therefore, yet of the ideas of honesty and piety by which 



312 JOHN RUSKIN. 

Old England lived : finally, because Sheffield is within 
easy reach of beautiful natural scenery." 

For some years this cottage perched on a hill, with 
an extensive view over the valley of the Don, was the 
humble shell of his " King's Treasury." From the be- 
ginning it was Mr. Ruskin's rigorous design to put the 
very best pictures, drawings, models, the most perfect 
examples of natural objects and of the skilled labour 
of men's hands in his museum, and to arrange them to 
accord with the principles of classification which he had 
thought out for purposes of appreciation and instruction. 
Mere variety, rareness, or curiosity were no objects to 
him. It was not mere bovine wonder which he sought 
to evoke, but intelligent understanding of the excellent 
works of nature and of man. 

After the lapse of some years the cottage at Walkley 
was found inadequate for the growing store, and an 
ampler home was sought. In 1890 proposals were made 
by the Corporation of Sheffield with the object of hous- 
ing Mr. Ruskin's treasures in a more convenient and 
accessible place. A number of private gentlemen under- 
took to provide <£5,000 for a permanent museum. The 
St. George's Guild, however, refused to accept any con- 
dition of permanency, wishing to be free to utilise the 
whole or any part of the collection, if desirable, in other 
places. At length Mr. Ruskin agreed with the Corpo- 
ration that the collection should be placed in the newly 
acquired public park at Heeley for the term of twenty 
years. The Corporation of Sheffield undertook to house 
and maintain the museum, appointing a committee for 
the purpose, upon which Mr. Ruskin and the two trustees 
of the Guild accepted seats. The only funds, however, 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 313 

available for purchases of new objects, in fulfilment of 
the purpose of the museum, are such moneys as remain 
in possession of the St. George's Guild and the bene- 
factions of private individuals. The utmost care has 
been exercised by the curator, Mr. William White, who 
superintended the transfer from Walkley, and has de- 
voted himself to the museum for the last eight years, 
to follow scrupulously the design of Mr. Ruskin; and 
every addition to the collection has kept in mind the 
definite intentions of the founder, whose spirit pervades 
the institution. 

The museum is still kept in accordance with the first 
intention, primarily as a place of education, and its 
method is still dominated by the principle that " a 
museum directed to the purposes of ethic as well as 
scientific education must contain no vicious, barbarous, 
or blundering art, and no abortive or diseased types, 
or states of natural things." For many years after its 
foundation, Mr. Ruskin continued to employ his own 
unrivalled skill and the money of the Guild to enlarge 
the early nucleus of the collection. Particularly did he 
labour, by his own hands and by the employment of 
other skilled artists, to complete, as far as possible, the 
record of the sculptural details of the churches and 
palaces which still stand as examples of the best periods 
of Italian and French architecture. Since Mr. Ruskin 
has been compelled to relinquish all personal part in 
this work, it has been carried on by members of the 
Guilds and friends. Though funds have to be strictly 
economised, some valuable additions have been recently 
made to the library, and the collection of engravings, 
including a copy of Turner's Liber Studiorum and 



314 JOHN BUS Km. 

various series of engravings of his water-colour draw- 
ings, many of the finest lithographic plates of Prout, 
and fine examples of the early masters of Italy and 
Germany. Mr. White, in particular, has followed Mr. 
Ruskin's footsteps in Italy, collecting photographs of 
buildings and sculptures, and filling up the lacunae 
of his records. The valuable collections of minerals, 
and of architectural casts upon which Mr. Ruskin be- 
stowed so much expense and trouble, are carefully 
arranged, and wherever profitable, printed or written 
descriptions are appended. The library contains many 
rare and beautiful works, enriched by plates illustrative 
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, besides works 
relating to the fine arts. 

Every effort has been expended to make the museum 
a home of material associations with Mr. Ruskin by 
securing some adequate representation of every picture, 
building, sculpture, or natural product which serves to 
illustrate or to interpret his books. Though this pur- 
pose imposes a more restricted scope than that which is 
taken by the general museums of the country, every one 
acquainted with the width and variety of the subject- 
matter of Mr. Ruskin's treatment will recognise that the 
collection can suffer from no narrow specialism. Strict 
care is taken to avoid confusing the mind and senses 
of the visitor by multiplicity of disordered detail ; a 
thoughtful system of rotation is practised in the exhibi- 
tion of the more educative drawings and pictures, only 
a limited number being placed on view at the same 
time. 

The walls of the rooms are garnished with suggestive 
and stimulative texts from Mr. Ruskin's writings. The 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 315 

first room, for example, containing stones and other 
specimens of natural history, thus enforces the first 
principles of all intelligent study. " You will never 
love Art well till you love what she mirrors better." 
" Pleasant wonder is no loss of time. ,, " All judgment 
of Art is founded in the knowledge of Nature." " There 
are so many things we never see." Not only by these 
bold proclamations, but by a thousand subtle incidents 
in the choice and the ordering of the treasures from 
nature and art, the reader of Mr. Ruskin's books is 
touched by the sense of his familiar personal presence : 
everywhere his mind and hand seems at work, his fine 
particular enthusiasms shine forth, his very prejudices 
are carefully conserved. Among the minerals, his 
special studies in the Silica class, in particular the 
agates and crystals, take prominence, recalling his 
early geological papers and his fascinating " Ethics 
of the Dust." The strict limitations of the Library 
and Print Department carry a distinction of their 
own. Here we find choicest illuminated Codices, 
Missals, and other religious works recalling the spir- 
itual life of " the middle ages," with volumes of noted 
"Yoyages and Travels," whose interest stretches back 
to Mr. Ruskin's early boyhood. In Literature the 
severest choice is exercised: Homer, Chaucer, and 
the French favourite Marmontel are represented by 
fine copies, together with a few of the later English 
prose writers. There is, however, no intention to pro- 
vide a library, even of " best books ; " it is the art side 
of literature in print, illustration, binding, etc., that is 
presented, though it is in strict accordance with Mr. 
Ruskin's universal principle that greatness of subject- 



316 JOHN RUSKIN. 

matter should be essential, and that no mere skill or f 
beauty of treatment should secure admission for slight j 
or unworthy subjects. The rule is even enforced to the ) 
total exclusion of prose fiction, so that Sir Walter Scott ' 
is only represented by his " Life of Napoleon." 

It is, however, in pictures and in architectural casts 
that the special interests and teaching of Mr. Ruskin are I 
most powerfully expressed, both in subject and in treat- i 
ment. Numerous studies of the finest works of the early j 
Italian masters, whose greatness it is one of the pecu- 
liar glories of Mr. Ruskin to have rediscovered for the 
modern world, are here presented in such a fashion as 
to draw intelligent attention to the detailed qualities i 
of colour, composition, or sentiment. Verrocchio and f 
Carpaccio, two of the greatest rediscoveries, are repre- j 
sented, the former by a rare original, the latter by a * 
series of studies of paintings representing the Legend of l 
St. Ursula, and by numerous other studies. 

Sculpture and architecture are exhibited in their close | 
natural relations, both through paintings and casts, with I 
especial reference to the great masterworks which form [ 
the subject of Mr. Ruskin's most eloquent and convinc- f 
ing criticism, St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace at ; 
Venice, the Duomo at Florence, Rouen Cathedral, etc. j 
Here is none of the crude unordered intellectualism, | 
the air of freaks and whimsicalities, the intrusion of j 
ugly and degraded elements of life which find place ! 
in the untempered " realism " of the ordinary museum. ' 
In the great personal atmosphere of the Ruskin Museum j 
the visitor can scarcely fail to gain certain clear and I 
noble ideas about the beauty and order of nature, f 
and the true treatment which wise human art accords f 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 317 

to them. The spell of this illumination is rudely 
broken, as he steps from the small park containing 
the museum into the mean, ugly, cramped streets of 
Heeley, the dismal new suburb of the great ogre town 
whose grimy arms and pestiferous breath have gathered 
in their stifling embrace so much of the fair country 
which lies around it. The social lesson afforded by 
this contrast is quite undesigned, for when this new 
home was chosen for the Ruskin collection, eight years 
ago, the windows of the museum commanded an un- 
broken view over the beautiful Derbyshire hills, now 
blocked by intervening streets and factory chimneys. 

The faithful, though but partial, record of the labours 
of a long, strenuous, and multifarious life devoted to the 
education of a nation in true paths of art and just order 
of society, this museum forms a unique and abiding 
memorial to the genius and humanity of our greatest 
modern teacher. There have been but few lives capa- 
ble of such a memorial ; where the sanctum of closest 
personal associations naturally opens out into the many- 
vistaed vision of a new society of happy and noble 
human beings, lovers of all that is good and beautiful 
in nature and in art, and bound by a common conscious 
purpose of working out the illimitable progress of 
humanity towards a goal of perfect brotherhood. 

§ 7. The most fruitful effort of Mr. Ruskin in the 
direction of practical industrial reform is in the revival 
of hand-weaving, wood-carving, and other home or small 
industries. It will be borne in mind that two motives 
impelled him to this course, — first, the desire that 
workers should do skilled and interesting work with 
their hands under wholesome and humane conditions; 



318 JOHN BUSKIN. 

secondly, that people should be able once more to 
know and to use good, sound, serviceable stuff, instead 
of cheap shoddy stuff. The experiment most closely 
associated with Mr. Ruskin is the St. George's Mill at 
Laxey, in the Isle of Man. Here, as in many other 
remote parts of the country, was a decaying hand-indus- 
try in spinning and weaving cloth. It was held by most 
people inevitable that these old-time industries should 
yield place to the new steam machinery and the factory 
life. Mr. Ruskin, among his many heresies, held that 
this was neither necessary nor desirable. Learning of 
the gallant, but apparently hopeless struggle of the 
spinners in Man, he took up the cause, found a ser- 
viceable right-hand man in Mr. Rydings, put new spirit 
into the old body by means of some capital and organ- 
isation, and established a new market among his friends 
and followers. He had a water-mill built at Laxey, to 
which farmers around brought their wool and were paid 
in yarn or in finished cloth, as in times of yore. All the 
processes of carding, spinning, and weaving were here 
carried on, some of the yarn being used for home knit- 
ting and weaving, some being woven at the mill. Here 
was made under old industrial conditions a sound cloth, 
all wool, warranted neither to shrink nor to change 
colour, and to "last for ever." For some time Mr. 
Ruskin himself took an active part in the management 
of the St. George's Mill, until in 1883 he found it 
necessary to hand it over to the care of Mr. George 
Thomson of Huddersfield. 

Mr. Thomson, a Yorkshire manufacturer, and one of 
the trustees of St. George's Guild, has himself adopted 
much of the social teaching of Mr. Ruskin, and has 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 319 

applied it to his own woollen and worsted business at 
Huddersfield. Converting his manufactory into a co- 
operative association, he made financial arrangements 
for direct participation in ownership of capital by the 
workers engaged in the mill, devising means by which 
an increasing proportion of the shares should pass into 
their hands, so that the actual producers became par- 
ticipators in the profits. The perfected intention of the 
scheme has been that half the net profits should go to 
the workers, the other half passing, conformably to the 
Rochdale co-operative idea, to the customers. Since 
the latter have been mostly the retail co-operative 
societies, the entire experiment has a particular interest 
attached to it as a novel attempt to heal the industrial 
breach between capital and labour on the one hand, 
producer and consumer on the other. 

Another experiment close after Mr. Ruskin's heart, 
and in which he took peculiar interest, was the revival 
of the old spinning industry in the cottages of West- 
moreland, brought about by his friend Mr. Albert 
Fleming, producing " the soundest and fairest linen 
fabrics that care can weave or field-dew blanch." This 
was the case of reviving a dead, not a dying, industry. 
The old spinning-wheels, once part of the furniture of 
every cottage, had disappeared for generations, and 
models were with difficulty raked out from lumber- 
closets. However, at length a cottage was turned into 
a spinning-school, equipped with the necessary wheels, 
and lady friends assisted Mr. Fleming in giving the 
needed instruction to the cottagers. "Next came the 
weaving. In a cellar in Kendal we discovered a loom ; 
it was in twenty pieces, and when we got it home, not 



320 JOHN BUSKIN. 

all the collective wisdom of the village knew how to set 
it up. Luckily we had a photograph of Giotto's Cam- 
panile, and by help of that the various parts were rightly 
put together. We then secured an old weaver, and one 
bright Easter morning saw our first piece of linen 
woven, — the first purely hand-spun and hand-woven 
linen produced in all broad England in our generation." 
Such is the account of the beginning of the Langdale 
linen industry given by Mr. Fleming. 1 This occurred 
in the winter of 1883, and is the first of a large number 
of similar revivals in different parts of the country. It 
was not designed as the complete basis of an industrial 
life, but only as a by-industry for the fireside in the 
evening after the day's work was done. In 1897 some 
twenty-five women were engaged in spinning and others 
in embroidering the linen, the best workers earning 5s. 
to 6s. a week. A great variety is produced for all sorts 
of domestic purposes, bleached or unbleached or dyed, 
according to fancy. 

§ 8. The Home Arts and Industries Association, 
which holds an exhibition every year, and issues a 
report, is evidence of the great influence which Mr. 
Ruskin's teaching and example has exercised upon this 
movement in different parts of Great Britain and Ire- 
land. The following statement of the aims of this As- 
sociation is ample testimony to this influence. It seeks : 

" 1. To train the eyes and fingers of its pupils, thereby 
not only adding to their resources and powers of em- 
ployment, but increasing their value as workmen, and 
making them more fit to earn a livelihood in whatever 
occupation they may adopt. 

1 " Studies in Ruskin," by Mr. E. T. Cook, p. 164, etc. 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 321 

"2. To fill up the idle hours of boys and girls, espe- 
cially at the age when they have left school and not 
taken up a regular trade, by providing occupation of a 
kind which will keep them happily employed at home. 

"3. To promote pleasant and sympathetic intercourse 
between the educated and the poor, and to enable the 
possessors of art-knowledge and culture to impart their 
gifts to those who are without either. 

"4. To revive the old handicrafts which once flourished 
in England, but which have now almost died out, and 
to encourage the labouring classes to take a pride in 
| making their homes beautiful by their own work." 

Classes organised in various places, largely by volun- 
I tary effort of unpaid teachers, are at work. In a few 
instances an already existing industry is organised and 
a market found for it, as in the hand-woven cloth of 
South Wales. In a few other cases a new art-industry 
has arisen, as in the " Delia Robbia Pottery " of Birken- 
head, giving full remunerative employment to skilled 
artists in design and execution. But in most instances 
the lines which mark off the work of the Association 
from other organisations of a more strictly business 
order are closely observed, the work being of a volun- 
tary and informal nature, more recreative and educa- 
tional than professional, and not forming the basis of a 
complete commercial livelihood. The chief occupations 
are hand-spinning, weaving, and embroidery of different 
fabrics, and work in wood, metal, and clay, though a 
great variation of minor handicrafts are also practised, 
such as embossed and cut leather work, bookbinding, 
and basket-making. A few of the classes are associated 
with South Kensington Science and Art Department, 



322 JOHN BUSKIN. 

certain others are partly supported by County Councils, 
but most are free from official support and its accom- i 
panying control, and represent voluntary organisation 
and working. 

The rapid growth of this interesting movement is 
evidenced by the fact that, beginning with 40 classes in 
1884, it has now considerably more than 500 classes at 
work. While many men and women of influence in art j 
and in society have taken an active part in endowing 
and establishing centres of this work, notably Mr. and 
Mrs. G. F. Watts, and Lady Brownlow, the inspiration 
has in large measure come visibly from Mr. Ruskin. 
In the neighbourhood of his northern home a number 
of hand industries, the embodiments of his teaching, 
indicate his direct influence. Among the most interest- 
ing of these is one which bears his name, the " Ruskin 
Linen Industry " of Keswick, in which teaching is given 
at cottage homes in spinning, weaving, embroidery, and 
lace, and the more ambitious experiment in teaching a 
variety of handicrafts undertaken by Mrs. and Miss 
Harris at Kirkby Lonsdale in Westmoreland. 

Nor does this work stand by itself as a gallant 
attempt to stem the inevitable encroachments of 
machine industry, as some would represent. It is 
rather to be regarded as an informal educational cur- 
rent in a wider and more potent movement of moderni 
taste, marking not a protest, but a progress, a demand 
for the free individual expression of art-power in all 
forms of plastic material both for use and decoration, 
and a corresponding demand on the part of the consumer 
that his individual tastes and needs shall be satisfied. 

It is, in a word, a practical informal attempt of a 



INDUSTRIAL EXPERIMENTS. 323 

i 

I civilised society to mark out for itself the reasonable 

I limits of machine-production, and to insist that " cheap- 

| ness " shall not dominate the whole industrial world to 

; the detriment of the pleasure and benefit arising from 
good work to the worker and the consumer. Such a 

I movement neither hopes nor seeks to restore mediae val- 

I ism in industry, nor does it profess hostility to ma- 

| chinery, but it insists that machines shall be confined to 

i the heavy, dull, monotonous, and therefore inhuman pro- 

I cesses of work, while for the skill of human hand and 

! eye shall be preserved all work which is pleasant and 

j educative in its doing, and the skill and character of 

I which contribute pleasure and profit to its use. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SUMMARY OP MR. RUSKIN'S WORK AND INFLUENCE. 

§ 4. The general nature of Ruskin's protest. § 2. His teaching 
compared with that of Morris and Tolstoy. § 3. A union 
of Hebraism and Hellenism. § 4. Summary of economic 
teaching. § 5. The unifying influences in Ruskin's thought. 
§ 6. Intellectual exclusiveness. § 7. Ruskin's literary qualities 
as a source of influence. § 8. A distinctively ''practical" 
teacher. 

In trying to mark as clearly as we may the place which 
Mr. Ruskin occupies among the social reformers of his 
age, it is of paramount importance to keep in mind 
his artistic temperament and training. For though the 
energy and inspiration of his social teaching was dis- 
tinctively moral in character, the basis of his discontent 
with existing industrial and social conditions, and the 
forms of his constructive policy, are referable to the 
demands of an artistic nature. The definite social evils \ 
which first appealed to him were the bad workmanship 
imposed upon most workmen by the industrial condi- 
tions of their age, the degradation of the outward form j 
of cities, and in particular of public and domestic architec- 
tare, the dominance which conventional and mechanical | 
modes of work had obtained both in the fine arts and in 1 
the industries, and in general the power exercised by \ 
irresponsible wealth to corrupt the finest human quali- 
ties, and to uglify the outward aspects of life. It was j 

324 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 325 

the search into the causes of bad art, and of false ideas 
about art, that inevitably led him to detect the poisoning 
of the springs of individual and social conduct, and to 
trace in the greatness and the fall of nations the opera- 
tion of forces which, chiefly economic in their outward 
working, are distinctively spiritual in their natural 
sources. This constant widening of ideas and sentiments, 
from art in its narrow connotation to an art which should 
include all sound work, and thence to the conception of 
an art first of individual then of social life, was, to a 
mind like Mr. Ruskin's, endowed at once with powerful 
and fearless analytic and constructive faculties, an in- 
evitable process. Whereas the tendency of industrial 
economists, labouring for the cause of social reform, has 
almost invariably lain towards a separation of work and 
enjoyment, the processes of production and consumption, 
with an almost exclusive stress upon the latter, as if 
social as well as individual welfare consisted in the 
multiplication of commodities ; the social revolt from 
the ranks of literature and art has made distinctively for 
the gospel of work, — work for all, good in quality, and 
valued for its own sake as well as for its result. This is 
the common note in the social teaching of men so widely 
different in many of their principles of life and modes of 
conduct as Emerson, Carlyle, Zola, Ibsen, William Morris, 
and Tolstoy. With such men this gospel of good work 
is no mere moral platitude, but a definite protest against 
the severance of work and life, process and result, pro- 
ducer and consumer, which the excessive specialisation 

I of industry has forced upon modern life. 

§ 2. The distinctive part which may be assigned to 

\ Mr. Ruskin in this many-voiced protest will be best 



326 JOHN BUSKIN. 

marked by a brief comparison of his general attitude 
with the equally uncompromising attitude of two of his 
contemporaries, — William Morris and Tolstoy. Many 
principles all three have in common, — the rejection of 
commercial competition and profit-seeking as destructive 
of good work, and of the sense of brotherhood ; the in- 
sistence upon the need and duty of manual labour for 
all, and a repudiation of the sophistry by which the intel- 
lectual and cultured classes seek to evade this natural 
law ; a denunciation of the machine-made town, and a 
leaning towards the simplest forms of rural life. Both in 
their work of criticism and of reconstruction there are 
many important points of agreement. Yet the widest 
temperamental differences of attitude towards work and 
life separate the three thinkers. Taking " News from 
Nowhere" as at once the fullest and most concrete 
expression of Morris's social reform teaching, we find 
it resolved into a single precept, " Do as you like." A 
society in which every one at once does what he likes, 
and likes what he does, is the ideal that is presented. 
All sense of pain and irksomeness is brushed away 
from labour ; duty either towards oneself, one's neigh- 
bours, or society nowhere presents itself as a necessary 
motive. The artist even now likes what he does ; there- 
fore, place all work on the footing of an art, the neces- 
sary work will all be done for its own sake, and for the 
sake of the pleasure got from doing it. Now Mr. Rusk in 
is at once more definitely moral and more practical. He 
perceives that much work is not inherently and imme- | 
diately desirable ; that most of the finest art-work is 
based upon toil and monotony of preparation ; that 
neither a sense of duty nor social compulsion can be | 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 327 

utterly dispensed with as motives to labour, and that 
the sense of moral obligation, and the painful endur- 
ance it often imposes, are not antagonistic to individual 
' and social good, though the promptings of passing self- 
; interest are opposed to them ; but that, on the contrary, 
this duty and this toil are important factors in the 
building up of character in men and nations. Mr. 
I Ruskin goes far with Morris, insisting that as much 
| work as possible should be made good and interesting, 
and that all should share such work ; but he neither sees 
| the feasibility nor admits the desirability of abolishing 
| from work those qualities of self-sacrifice which imply 
1 the subordination of the present interests of a narrow 
' self to the longer interests of the larger social self. Yet 
he by no means carries his doctrine of self-sacrifice in 
art and life to the extent whicn Tolstoy has carried it 
in his later teaching. It is not indeed easy to represent 
Tolstoy's doctrine without appearing guilty of parody. 
It must suffice to say that the great Russian writer 
seems to deny pleasure and the love of beauty any legiti- 
mate position as motives to the artist ; by imposing com- 
municability of feelings and ideas as the standard of art, 
and the desire to inform others, and so to further social 
sympathy as the only genuine art-motive, he has made 
that self-sacrifice or toil for others which Mr. Ruskin 
recognised as one of the incentives of true individual 
work, the one absorbing motive. At one with Tolstoy 
in recognising that art ought not to be a thing apart, a 
specialism to be practised by a few, but an essential 
factor in the life of all, according to their several capac- 
ities and the requirements of the work in which they 
are engaged, that the distinction between fine arts and 



328 JOHN RUSKIN. 

arts or industries not so fine is only a matter of degree, 
Mr. Ruskin yet would utterly refuse to endorse Tolstoy's 
rejections of professional technique and his insistence 
that spontaneity of expression is the only art-power. 
Moreover, Mr. Ruskin is ever a strenuous pleader for 
enjoyment as a right to be accorded every one in a well- 
ordered society : the joyful exercise of every physical 
and intellectual faculty belongs to his idea of a free and 
healthy individual life : the asceticism of Tolstoy has no 
place in his social order. 

In his view of the use and need of social discipline, 
even in the form of public coercion, he is divided from 
both Morris and Tolstoy. In the ideal society of the 
former coercion has no place, because it is no longer 
necessary in order to induce men to do the best they 
can for society ; while the scheme of Tolstoy is grounded 
upon the assumption of the immorality of all application 
of physical force. Thus, compared with these extreme 
teachers, Mr. Ruskin ranks as a common-sense philos- 
opher, not representing all work as capable of yielding 
present pleasure with Morris, nor idealising the moral ! 
powers of man with Tolstoy. 

; It may perhaps be claimed for Mr. Ruskin that his 
philosophy, alike of art and of social reform, combines 
and even merges the supposed antagonism of Hellenism 
and Hebraism more completely than that of any other 
modern thinker. To many, indeed, it has always seemed 
that Hebraism is the sentimental taproot of his thinking. 
Whether there is any right ground for this supposition, 
beyond the fact that, recognising the current neglect of 
the moral factors which enter into art, he laid dramatic 
emphasis on this defect in his art-teaching, may well be 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 329 

doubted. As to the other form which the quarrel of 
" artists for art's sake " have often fastened upon Mr. 
Ruskin, it arises from a narrowness of understanding on 
their part. An artist who, quitting the scope of some 
special art, proceeds to universalise art in the art of 
living, must necessarily seem to sin against art in the 
narrower sense ; the planning out of social life as an 
organic whole changes the focus as well as enlarges the 
subject, and the philosophic and spiritual focus adopted 
for the larger work abrogates the " absolute freedom " 
of any single art, however fine. 

§ 4. He has unwittingly deceived many and offended 
not a few by giving forth his art of life under the title 
of Political Economy, sometimes expanding that term 
to its utmost capacity so as to embrace the whole science 
and practice of social life, sometimes, for combat, con- 
tracting it within the recognised orthodox limits. 

As social reformer he has conferred signal services 
both in criticism and in construction of the theory and 
the art of social economics. The three deepest and 
most destructive maladies of modern industrial society 
he has exposed with more intellectual acuteness and 
with more convincing eloquence than any other writer. 
These are, first, the prevalent mechanisation of work 
and life ; secondly, injustice as an economic basis of all 
bargaining; thirdly, the definite forms of waste and 
injury to work and human character arising from trade 
competition. 

On the constructive side he has laid a true scientific 
foundation of a science and art of social economics by 
insisting upon (1) the reduction of commercial to 
human "costs" and "utilities" as the true foundation 



330 JOHN 1WSKIN. 

of a theory of wealth ; (2) the inclusion of non-com- 
mercial as well as commercial values, i.e. the main- 
tenance of the organic unity of the related faculties of 
effort and enjoyment; (3) the establishment of a social 
standard of goodness or happiness as an ideal. 

To this it must be added that he made the most 
searching inquiry into the human processes involved 
in production and consumption. 

" Honest production, just distribution, wise con- 
sumption," — these words summarise the reforms the 
necessity of which he laboured to enforce. 

§ 5. Those who complain of Mr. Ruskin, as they 
complained of such men as Carlyle and Emerson, that 
he presented no such closely ordered philosophy of life 
as would satisfy the intellect, mistake, not so much the 
character of Mr. Ruskin's teaching, as the necessary 
limitations of human thought and language. Of all 
these men it may be said that they had an intuitive per- 
ception of the inability of human reason to afford such 
intellectual satisfaction. The necessary imperfections of 
language, the very processes of division and definition 
which reasoning involves, by their very nature baffle 
the mind in the search for that harmony and unity of 
design which alone can afford such intellectual satis- 
faction as is desired. The utmost straining after the 
appearance of intellectual completeness can only pro- 
duce a delicately adjusted structure of artificial termi- 
nology, the innumerable rifts of which cannot but 
appear on closer analysis. Mr. Ruskin rightly judged 
that sound sensations and emotions, and the sane 
valuation of things derived from them, supply a truer 
unifying force in the art of life than metaphysics can 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 331 

I give. The unity and harmony of life are more power- 
| fully and more consciously realised in the cultivation of 
I full human sympathies by such men as Mr. Ruskin, 
\ Emerson, or Browning, than by the most highly desic- 
cated scheme of philosophy ever made in Germany. No 
modern thinker evinces a stronger grasp of the " whole- 
someness " of life ; no resolution of false dualism by 
philosophy is more effective than that clear and mani- 
fold perception of the truth that "the laws above are 
sisters of the laws below " which came to Mr. Ruskin, 
as he followed out, through history and the intimate 
study of the fine arts, the subtle threads of union be- 
tween the material and the spiritual life. The sources 
of wholesome physical life, pure air and water, free com- 
munion with the powers of the uncontaminated earth, 
are but the material counterparts of the sources of 
spiritual life, admiration, hope, and love. As the body 
draws its sustenance from the one source, so the mind 
is fed and energised from the other. The artist re- 
quires to be rooted in Nature, and to interpret her by 
the light of the love of ideas. So with the art of life, in 
which every one should be an artist; sound conditions 
of material work and life are the bases of worthy human- 
ity. Modern industrial life demands reform, because 
it suffers from two mortal diseases which war against 
this right ideal of human society ; first, it deprives men 
of this sound physical basis of life ; secondly, it poisons 
the springs of spiritual life and of intellectual honesty 
by permitting the dominion of selfish lust directed to 
the attainment of low material ends. 

§ 6. The defective sympathy which Mr. Ruskin shows 
for not a few of the modern social ideas and move- 



332 JOHN BUSKIN. 

ments which seem to make for progress, is a common 
fault of those great originative geniuses who, to quote 
the language of Oliver Wendell Holmes, " carry in 
their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's 
or century's civilisation." 

A suggestive comment upon this quality of miso- 
neism is made by the Italian sociologist Lombroso, who j 
says, " The men who create new worlds are as much I 
enemies of novelty as ordinary persons and children. 
They display extraordinary energy in rejecting the dis- 
coveries of others ; whether it is that the saturation, so ' 
to say, of their brains prevents any new absorption, or \ 
that they have acquired a special sensibility, alert only 
to their own ideas, and refractory to the ideas of 
others." 1 

Whatever may be the scientific explanation, there i 
can be no question but that a mind of the intensity and 
concentration of Mr. Ruskin's is, in fact, "possessed" 
by certain leading ideas originating from within to the ' 
exclusion of ideas from without. If this is a defect, of 
which we make no question, it is a penalty which so I 
high a quality must be content to pay. 

§ 7. In this concluding chapter something remains 
to be said regarding the distinctively literary methods of 
Mr. Ruskin in their influence upon the force of his teach- 
ing and the acceptance of his ideas. 

It is a matter of serious doubt whether his brilliant 
literary qualities have aided or retarded the acceptance 
of his thought. Wit and imagination, eloquence and 
passion, those qualities which are essential to the " liter- 
ature of power," exercise a curious double and con- 
1 The Man of Genius, p. 17. 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 333 

tradictory influence upon the mind of most English 
readers. While our enjoyment and appreciation of 
such writing is both keen and genuine, this very relish 
awakes our suspicion ; our cautious temperament shrinks 
from any full abandonment to the feelings, and our very 
admiration of emotional power is provided with an 
automatic check. 

Mistaking our ability to distinguish those " sensa- 
tions " which are " just, measured, and continuous," 
rooted in the facts of nature and of human life, from 
those which are the spurious products of mere literary 
artifice, we commonly seek to guard ourselves by dis- 
counting at extravagant rates all those elements which 
appeal to our emotions and not to our understanding. 
Though the great literature of all nations and all times 
stands as testimony to the use of impassioned language 
in the service of truth, the " common sense " of our 
nation has always refused acceptance of this fact. The 
" practical " man still looks with suspicious scorn upon 
" works of imagination," and the great masterpieces of 
prose fiction, which are the typical product of our 
modern literary genius, are not fully recognised as 
useful vehicles of truth. 

This is not to be explained merely by attributing it 
to a national distaste for ideas and a correspondent 
mistrust of ideals. It is primarily due to a false psy- 
chology, based on defective temperament, which seeks 
wrongly to isolate the ratiocinative faculty, and con- 
siders that the imaginative faculty has no proper place 
either in the discovery or the teaching of truth. It is 
this notion which underlies the popular distrust of an 
attractive style ; even J. S. Mill was felt by some to be 



334 JOHN RUSEIN. 

too literary for a " serious thinker." A solid and con- 
vincing treatment of political economy or any " social i 
science " ought to stick to the stony facts, and build out 
of them a durable, intellectual edifice. The discovery of 
social truth should be conducted by a solemn marshal- 
ling of the several orders of concrete phenomena, and 
their formal interpretation by the application of laws 
based upon inductive reasoning and expressed in care- 
fully defined terminology; the teaching of such truth 
should be conducted by a steady pressure of closely 
consecutive reasoning, a syllogistic uncoiling of proposi- 
tions which shall insert or insinuate them into a vacantly 
receptive understanding in one continuous line. 

Now Mr. Ruskin neither gets his truths nor conveys 
them in this manner. We have already entered a two- 
fold defence of his scientific method of inquiry. We 
have pointed out, in the first place, how the "facts" 
which can be ascertained by the elimination of human 
feeling, through the dry light of the intellect, are not 
the sort of facts he seeks ; human facts, true social facts, 
require for their finding the penetrative and construc- 
tive powers of the human imagination. Economic facts, 
which are to be measured, not objectively in terms of 
money, but subjectively in terms of human life, cannot 
be learned except by the organic application of all the 
interpretative powers of man, sympathetic as well as 
ratiocinative. Again, we have shown that when the 
subject-matter has once been placed in position for 
strict intellectual analysis, Mr. Ruskin, though not 
infallible, is far more competent than most of his 
detractors, and is quite capable of excluding passion 
and imagination where pure reasoning has rightful sway. 



WOEK AND INFLUENCE. 335 

Now the same vital difference in method affects 
Mr. Ruskin's mode of teaching. Much of this teaching- 
consists in attempts to make facts felt, to vitalise knowl- 
edge. Social facts conveyed in statistics, or in abstract 
terminology, are mere formal acquisitions of the intel- 
lect ; they may be serviceable for proving or disproving 
propositions in the practice of intellectual gymnastics ; 
but when it is sought to relate them to other classes of 
fact, so as to yield a basis of conduct, they are useless 
in this condition. Now, since Mr. Ruskin's conception 
of social economics breaks down — as we have seen it 
must — the barrier between science and practice, he is 
rightly insistent that all his facts shall be vitally appre- 
ciated by those whom he teaches. One illustration may 
serve to show how right he is in holding that no merely 
quantitative statement of truth is valid. Mr. Charles 
Booth's computation that thirty -four per cent, of Lon- 
doners are living upon a weekly income per family of 
less than twenty-one shillings seems a definite' statement 
enough, but it has really no meaning ; it is not grasped 
even by the intellect until we have reduced it to terms 
of humanity. Now this is not achieved merely by com- 
putations of rent and prices of food, or by assessment of 
the physical requirements of an average family. All 
such knowledge we must have, but the moral force of 
the imagination is needed to interpret the facts, and to 
present them to the mind as an organic whole in their 
bearing upon the ideal life of the Londoner before we 
have truly comprehended them. Mr. Ruskin's first great 
task as teacher was to present facts in this humanised 
form, so as to enter the hearts of his readers, as well as 
their understandings. It is for this that he strained to 



336 JOHN BUSKIN. 

the utmost his great literary powers. To those accus- 
tomed to more formal modes of instruction, and who 
harbour suspicions of rhetoric, his free discursive and 
richly allusive mode of speech has been a source of 
perplexity, and even of annoyance. " Fors " is full of 
passages which seem to pompous sober-sides misplaced 
levity or malicious exaggeration. 

In such a spirit, for instance, the ordinances and 
the dignitaries of the Church are often roughly handled. 
Such a passage as the following is typical of the satirical 
language which pervades " Fors," and which is an offence 
to many : 

" Meantime, the bishop, and the rector, and the 
rector's lady, and the dear old Quaker spinster who 
lives in Sweetbriar Cottage, are so shocked that you 
drink so much, and that you are such horrid wretches 
that nothing can be done for you ! and you mustn't 
have your wages raised, because you will spend them 
in nothing but drink. And to-morrow they are all 
going to dine at Drayton Park, with the brewer who 
is your member of Parliament, and is building a public 
house at the railway station, and another in the High 
Street, and another at the corner of Philpott's Lane, and 
another by the stables at the back of Tunstall Terrace, 
outside the town, where he has just bricked over the 
Dovesbourne, and filled Buttercup Meadow with broken 
bottles ; and, by every measure, and on every prin- 
ciple of calculation, the growth of your prosperity is 
established ! " * 

What an inimitably truthful picture of a whole 
large segment of social life, and yet the corruption of 
1 Fors, Letter xxiii. (iv. 13). 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 337 

! the faculty of observation is such that there is an almost 
I instinctive tendency to reject it as caricature ! Or read 
j the brilliantly sportive treatment of " English Roast 
I Beef" in an earlier letter, 1 or any of the numerous 
! illustrations of his charge against the clergy that " they 
j teach a false gospel for hire." 

Many of these passages are supposed by readers 
j accustomed to the amenities of literature to be wild 
outbursts of irresponsible wrath, only excusable by 
imputing to the writer a total lack of self-control. Mr. 
j Ruskin, however, in most cases neither desires nor 
i deserves such excuses. He claims to be judged by 
[the standard of great literature, which knows none of 
these amenities, and which does not confuse temperance 
with suavity. Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Dante, Milton, and 
other prophets of righteousness did not mince their 
words; it is their spirit and their freedom of speech 
which Mr. Ruskin claims. Strong things need strong 
names ; a strong man in literature and in life calls 
these things by their names. When Mr. Ruskin de- 
nounced in sharp, short, passionate phrases the corrupt 
torpor of the Church, the degrading selfishness of com- 
mercial profit-mongers, the miserable and sordid vul- 
garity of suburban villadom, the godless irresponsibility 
. of the " classes," the anarchy which masquerades as 
Liberalism among the masses, the evil tyranny of 
mechanism in commerce and in art, — when he sought 
by scorching instances to brand these evils into the 
[hearts and understandings of his hearers, ought we 
to hold out our hands in finicking deprecation, with 
protests against " such terrible aspersions," " such irre- 
iFors, Letter xxv. (ii. 9, 10). 



338 JOHN BUSKIN. 

sponsible abuse," " such outrageous caricature ? " Oug 
we not rather first to ask whether the language does n 
substantially convey the truth, whether the denunci 
tion is not justified ? Mr. Ruskin always insisted o 
"the truth and soberness" of "Fors." That much 
his language was highly " heated " he sought not to 
deny, but rather to justify, as helping him to tell the 
truth, " that manner of mental ignition or irritation 
being for the time a great additional force, enabling 
me to discern more clearly, and say more vividly, what 
for long years it had been in my heart to say." 1 

The greater part of what passes for exaggeration in 
Mr. Ruskin's statements of fact is simply due to his 
keen perception of the truth and his powerful mode 
of expressing it, even if something must also be allowed 
for the legitimate emphasis of the literary setting, that 
idealisation of a specific truth which he has always 
insisted on as a right function of all art. 

These accusations of unfair and reckless exaggera- 
tion commonly proceed from those who have not 
studied Mr. Ruskin's writings sufficiently closely to 
know that epithets which sound at first reckless and 
casual are chosen with conscious care. The writer 
of " Sesame " did, indeed, lay down a counsel of per- 
fection for the conscientious study of language, but no 
modern writer came nearer to a following of the counsel. 
" My own literary work," he writes in " Praeterita," 
" was always done as quietly and methodically as a 
piece of tapestry." 2 

This was true even of the meanderings of the 
" Fors : " though choice of subject was often left 
1 Fors, Letter lxxxviii. 2 PraBterita, ii. 241. 



WORK AND INFLUENCE. 339 

the inspiration of some casual event or letter received, 
treatment was always dictated by conscientious scrupu- 
losity. Those who complain that Mr. Ruskin did not 
" stick to one subject at a time," are probably mistaken 
through not knowing what " one subject " is. 

Mr. Ruskin sometimes buried his main track too 
long under the patches of biography and heraldry ; he 
often overrated both the culture and the perspicacity 
of his readers, but for all that his educative method 
was radically sound. He knew that the first duty of 
the teacher is to catch his hearer. The professor in 
his lecture-room, addressing students who have volun- 
tarily devoted themselves to the continuous following 
of a narrowly marked line of study, is in a very different 
position from the self-elected teacher who wishes to 
seize the reluctant crowd and compel them to come 
in. His just instinct led him to understand that quite 
the first duty of such a teacher is to keep the minds of 
his listeners open and alert, and not to deaden the 
sensitive apertures of their minds by a constant mo- 
notony of dull instruction. No one more completely 
grasped and more subtly practised the vital as distin- 
guished from the logico-mechanical method of teaching. 
In order to keep the attention fresh and receptive, he 
constantly varied the approach, changed the topic with 
fluent versatility, leaping from analogy to analogy with 
surpassing nimbleness of illustration, now leaving his 
main highway to explore some pleasant by-path, anon 
returning with a swift curve of the road back to his 
theme. So, sometimes by dogmatising, sometimes by 
suggestion, by pathetic or humorous appeal, by quick 
and close research into the meaning of words, by minute 



340 JOUN BUSKIN. 

logic-chopping, taking every instrument of rhetoric and 
reasoning as it came to hand, never forging it by arti- 
fice, but always finding it, he played upon the mind of 
his public with multiform effect. Was the result or- 
dered knowledge ? Yes. Where he sought to convince 
the understanding, he convinced ; where he sought to 
impart facts or trains of reflection, these stand out 
clearly enough from the rhetorical environment which 
is their setting ; the sense of proportion is seldom ulti- 
mately lost, the merely incidental is seldom allowed to 
overshadow or weigh down the essential. 

§ 8. Mr. Ruskin was never cajoled by words to loose 
his grip of the things which words purport to represent. 
In all his writing he was definite and practical. But 
to him the "things of the mind" were the most real 
things. The reality of ideas and sentiments, the prac- 
ticality of sane ideals, this was his preachment to a 
nation falsely proud of being practical, because it has 
been successful in a narrow " doing " directed almost 
exclusively to narrow material ends. 

To clarify the vision, to elevate the aim, to humanise, 
and so to dignify, the ends of conduct, are the persistent 
endeavours of John Ruskin's teaching. His hope and 
his appeal as reformer of society is to those misdirected 
or ill-directed forces of character which have made us so 
successful as individuals and as nations in the grosser 
forms of activity, and which, well economised for nobler 
purposes, might secure for us a " greatness " measurable 
neither in miles of territory, millions of population, nor 
in volume of commerce, but in " the multiplication of 
human life at its highest standard." 



APPENDIX. 



WAR. 

Mr. Ruskin's curious praise of war demands separate 
attention. A certain tendency to worship force qud 
force, which, in spite of disclaimers, sometimes mani- 
fests itself in him, as in Carlyle, is partly responsible 
for his view. The romantic aspect of war which he got 
in childhood from Homer and from Scott never passed 
from him ; the vivid dramatic presentation, both of the 
horror and the glory, evinces a certain unreality. The 
love of mastership, and of the self-assertion of strong 
men, casts a glamour over war, the most pronounced 
form of self-assertion. This sentiment is less a manly 
than a womanly quality ; it is found rather in physically 
weak, sensitive men than in robust ones, arising from 
the idealisation of a quality by those who possess it not. 
Mr. Ruskin does not see war as it is or was; he does 
not see it as those few literary men who have experi- 
enced it face to face see and describe it, men like Maz- 
zini and Tolstoy. Perhaps the pages we would most 
willingly delete from his works are those containing the 
address to young Woolwich students, reprinted in " The 

W 



342 APPENDIX. 

Crown of Wild Olive," which defend " the game of war " 
as that occupation in which " the full personal power of 
the human creature" finds effective expression, and 
which, " when well played, determines who is the best 
man." 1 It is true that both here and elsewhere wars of 
sheer aggression for selfish ends of territorial or com- 
mercial aggrandisement are denounced. But few de- 
fend wars ostensibly undertaken for gain. The sanction 
and incitement given by Mr. Ruskin to the English na- 
tion "to undertake aggressive war, according to their 
force, wherever they are, assured that their authority 
would be helpful and protective," however laudable as 
a theory of national conduct, is one of the most danger- 
ous pieces of advice that could be tendered to a people 
always able to persuade themselves that their interfer- 
ence is "helpful and protective," when it extends the 
influence of England over a new area of the world. It 
is true that the wars approved by Mr. Ruskin belong to 
national knight-errantry and not to selfish rapacity ; but 
in permitting the indulgence of the war-spirit outside 
the limits of pure self-defence, he gives free operation 
to dangerous forces without providing any adequate 
checks. 

This defence of war comes under two heads : 
" All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on 
war ; no great art ever rose on earth but among a na- 
tion of soldiers." 2 Egypt, Greece, and Rome are the 
examples he claims to have most in mind. 3 But are the 
finer arts of these nations to be regarded as in any sense 
the direct fruits of war ? Egypt, at any rate, was never 
a warlike nation. Most nations which have founded a 
1 Crown of Wild Olive, § 101. 2 Ibid., § 116. 3 Ibid., § 89. 



WAR. 343 



civilisation, rendering the cultivation of fine arts possi- 
ble, have certainly been at some time compelled to fig] 
for their existence. A great national spirit, brought 
into self-consciousness by a struggle for existence, as 
was the Greek spirit by the Persian wars, has some- 
times found expression afterwards in art and literature. 
But this merely indicates that national genius is not so 
closely specialised a power as it may seem to those who 
classify nations by some specific contribution they seem 
to make to the world's history in some particular period 
of their growth, as art and philosophy to Greece, law- 
making to Rome, astronomy, mathematics, etc., to the 
East, and so forth. 

Some nations were great in war at the same time as 
they were great in " the noble arts of peace ; " this, 
to some extent, was true of Greece and Rome, but it 
was not true of Egypt, China, Phoenicia, and Holland. 
" Commerce," says Mr. Ruskin, " is barely consistent 
with fine art, but cannot produce it." This is untrue 
of Holland and Italy. No such causal relations as are 
here suggested are indeed capable of proof ; neither con- 
comitance nor sequence proves causation. What Mr. 
Ruskin had to show, in order to sustain his thesis, was 
that some natural and necessary connection exists be- 
tween the destructive art of war and the constructive 
arts of peace. This he has not shown, and could not 
show. 

But his most curious defence of war is the ennobling 

influence upon the national character which he imputes 

to it. " It has been impossible for any nation, except a 

warrior one, to fix its mind wholly on its men, instead 

! of on its possessions." In other words, the transition 



344 APPENDIX. 

from a military to an industrial organisation of society, 
which Herbert Spencer regards as a distinctive mark of 
civilisation, is really a mark of degradation. The sen- 
tence just quoted is open to multifarious criticism. Are 
the virtues of the warrior — discipline, courage, self- 
restraint — an adequate compensation for the brutalising 
influence of his occupation? The thoughts of the sol- 
dier qud soldier are not set upon making men, as Mr. 
Ruskin would insist, but upon slaying men ; the cultiva- 
tion of martial virtues are valued as means to this end. 
If the " profit " of a commercial mind, the end of com- 
mercial activity, is debasing, is " slaughter," the end of 
military activity, less debasing, for this is the fair com- 
parison ? Again, it may be asked, are these " virtues " 
of the soldier sound moral qualities at all ? Is not the 
discipline formal, the self-restraint unreal, the courage 
largely animal bravery? Is not the evil education of 
war manifested by the inability of soldiers to conform to 
the laws of peaceful societies ? These are some of the 
questions which occur, nor are they really answered by 
the distinction between a mercenary and a citizen army 
which Mr. Ruskin draws, approving the latter and rep- 
robating the former. Reversion to a totally unspecial- 
ised military system is now impossible, as Mr. Ruskin 
must have known. There is, however, a peculiar weak- 
ness in the assertion, that war makes against greed in an 
age like this, when most wars are " for markets." Mr. 
Ruskin might have known that more than half the fight- 
ing of the world has been directly animated by a desire 
to take the land, the food, or the trade of others. That 
he should have taken his stand with Tennyson in the 
shallow criticism of " Maud," which makes the soldier a 



WAR. 345 

superior creature to the merchant, is indeed deplorable. 
No one who turns from " Crown of Wild Olive " to Em- 
erson's essay upon " War " can fail to detect the shallow 
sociology of Mr. Ruskin. The obtuseness of such a 
judgment is the more remarkable in him, because even 
in the lecture upon war to the Woolwich students, he 
showed " the ghastly ludicrousness " of the thing 1 by 
quoting the very language in which Carlyle exposes the 
imposture of these national quarrels, in which the poor 
blockheads who do the fighting are made the tools of 
the governing classes. " Straightway the word ' Fire ! ' 
is given, and they blow the souls out of one another, and 
in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world had 
sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury and anon shed 
tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the 
devil is, not the smallest ! They lived far enough apart ; 
were the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a universe, 
there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mu- 
tual helpfulness between them. How then ? Simpleton ! 
their governors had fallen out; and instead of shoot- 
ing one another, had the cunning to make these poor 
blockheads shoot." 

Nay ! Mr. Ruskin understood far better than Carlyle 
what was the nature of this " cunning ; " how the love 
of money was the root of this particular evil. He saw 
what the mind of the nation, in spite of our modern 
business education, is so slow to comprehend, the dis- 
tinctively financial origin of modern wars, and the finan- 
cial aftermath of its glories. The plain truth is so 
plainly set in the Preface of " Munera Pulveris," that 
it is probably set aside as humorous parody by most 
1 Crown of Wild Olive, § 99. 



346 APPENDIX. 

readers, such being the usual treatment of the truth 
when it is inconvenient. " Capitalists, when they do 
not know what to do with their money, persuade the 
peasants that the said peasants want guns to shoot each 
other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out 
of the manufacture of which the capitalists get a per- 
centage, and men of science much amusement and 
credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of 
each other until they get tired, and burn each other's 
homes down in various places. Then they put the 
guns back into towns, arsenals, etc., in ornamental 
patterns (and the victorious party put also some ragged 
flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both 
annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan 
of the guns and gunpowder." * 

In one curiously bold passage he presses this economic 
lesson closer home, and drives it into the discovery, 
almost the justification, of that very revolutionary class- 
war which he so deeply and so constantly deplores. 

"Wars between nations (fools and knaves though 
they be) is not necessarily in all respects evil. . . . But 
Occult Theft — Theft which hides itself even from 
itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly — cor- 
rupts the body and soul of man, to the last fibre of 
them. And the guilty Thieves of Europe, the real 
sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists, — 
that is to say, people who live by percentages on the 
labour of others ; instead of by fair wages for their own. 
The Heal war in Europe, of which this fighting in Paris 
is the Inauguration, 2 is between these and the workmen, 

1 Munera Pulveris, Pref. xxvi ; cf. Fors, Letter viii. (i. 150). 

2 Written July, 1871. 



WAR. 347 



! such as these have made him. They have kept him 
i poor, ignorant, and sinful, that they might, without his 
; knowledge, gather for themselves the produce of his 
i toil. At last, a dim insight into the fact of this dawns 
on him ; and such as they have made him he meets 
• them, and will meet." * 

In his preface to a pamphlet on " Usury ," 2 he re- 
| affirms and illustrates at some length the judgment 
briefly expressed in " Unto this Last." " It is entirely 
capitalists' (i.e. usurers) wealth which supports unjust 
wars." Had Mr. Ruskin searched more closely into the 
nature of just wars, he would have found reason to 
modify the language of his address to the Woolwich 
students, and to regard even " just wars " as necessary 
evils with essentially brutalising consequences upon those 
who engage in them. 

Mr. Ruskin's account of the intimate relation between 
war and usury receives striking confirmation from a 
great modern authority upon finance, who writes as 
follows : " Debt, too, is a great determining factor every- 
where in the imposing of taxation. Of late years the 
passion for warlike display has entered into competition 
with it, but this passion could not, in most cases, be 
gratified, were it not for the facilities given for creating 
fresh debts. . . . Supreme over all . . . is the debt 
born of wars, and of the love of warlike display. The** 
more this folly is indulged in, the deeper is the holcT 
the great masters of usury have upon the springs of 
i a nation's life. Not only do the obligations they create, 
for future generations to bear, draw more and more of 

i Fors, Letter vii. (i. 140). 

2 Keprinted in " On the Old Koad," ii. 243. 



348 APPENDIX. 

the substance of the people into the pockets of money- 
lenders, but they frequently necessitate, by their intol- 
erable pressure, a leaning on the help of great finance 
houses to a degree which places the political institutions 
of a country more and more under their thumb." x 

1 Mr. A. J. Wilson, Contemporary Review, March, 1898. 



APPENDIX. 



II. 

RUSKIN SOCIETIES AND THEIR WORK. 

Some information regarding the Ruskin Societies at 
Birmingham, Liverpool, and Glasgow may serve to illus- 
trate the strong hold which Mr. Ruskin's books and 
personality are gaining over people of thought and cul- 
ture throughout the country. 

The largest of these Societies is that established in 
Birmingham in 1896, the President of which is the 
Dean of Ely, and the Honorable Secretary and active 
organiser Mr. J. Howard Whitehouse. It numbers 
about four hundred members. The objects of the So- 
ciety are stated in the Syllabus as follows : 

" 1. To form a centre of union for students and others 
interested in Mr. Ruskin's writings. 

"2. To promote the study and circulation of his works 
by means of lectures, discussions, and the issuing of such 
publications as may be deemed advisable. 

" 3. To influence public opinion in relation to art and 
ethics on lines which he has indicated. 

" 4. Generally, to encourage such life and learning as 
may fitly and usefully abide in this country." 

The work of the Society comprises a series of lectures 
given during the winter session upon subjects conforma- 

349 



350 APPENDIX. 

ble to the objects of the Society, and includes addresses ! 
by such men as Mr. W. G. Collingwood, Dean Farrar, 
Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Kineton Parkes, Mr. A. E. 
Fletcher. Special meetings are also arranged for more 
intimate discussions of aspects of Mr. Ruskin's work. 
A library exists for the use of members, containing [ 
books written by Mr. Ruskin and others relating to his ' 
works. 

Lastly, this vigorous Society possesses a quarterly j 
journal, entitled " St. George," the early issues of which , 
merit the highest praise alike for their matter and their 
form. " St. George " contains articles or reports of lec- 
tures delivered before the Society, reviews of works of 
literature and art, and some admirable notes. 

The Birmingham Society (which takes the additional 
title suggested by Mr. Ruskin of " The Society of the 
Rose ") adopts and prints in its reports an extract from 
the Creed of St. George's Guild. 

The Liverpool Ruskin Society, containing a smaller 
number of members, also displays great activity. Its 
lecture work appears to have a more special reference 
to the social and economic part of Mr. Ruskin's teach- 
ing, and, in addition to general meetings of the Society, 
group meetings of members are held for the study of 
special books, such as " Unto this Last," and Carlyle's 
" Past and Present." A library of Mr. Ruskin's books 
exists. 

An interesting development is the educational and 
social work undertaken by the Society. Classes for 
youths and men, and for girls, are held during the 
winter months. " Practical instruction is given in 
artistic needlework, in which few and simple materials 



BUSKIN SOCIETIES. 351 

are used, so that the girls may learn that true decoration 
of person and home does not depend on lavishness of 
money or material, but is the reward of the virtues 
of patience and industry, waited upon by the gifts of 
skill and imagination.' ' 

A noteworthy attempt at a literal fulfilment of Mr. 
Ruskin's economic teaching is the St. Anthony's Bank. 

" This bank has been formed in imitation of the 
ancient custom of the Christian Church, of lending 
money to help those who had fallen into distress, and to 
whom temporary help might be the means of preventing 
increased difficulty and sorrow. Loans will be granted 
(without interest or expense) in cases approved by the 
Committee of Management, and preference will be given 
to cases of misfortune. Lender and borrower will act 
in money matters in simple and brotherly relations, the 
loan being for the good of the borrower, who will be 
expected to repay conscientiously, with the knowledge 
that the money is being set free for a similar help to 
others." 

The Glasgow Society has the distinction of being by 
far the oldest of the Societies, having originated in 1879. 
Among its Honorary Presidents is the Master of Balliol, 
and it contains several well-known names among its 
officers and council. Its specific aims are three : (1) 
To encourage and promote the study and circulation of 
Mr. Ruskin's writings ; (2) To form a centre of union 
for " Ruskin students ; " and (3) " To promote such life 
and learning as may fitly and usefully abide in this 
country." 

In addition to the ordinary lecture syllabus, and a 
valuable library, a Lectures Extension Committee exists, 



352 APPENDIX. 

which arranges lectures upon Mr. Ruskin's writings, and 
upon social and art questions closely related to them. 
A considerable number of lectures by well-known Ruskin 
students has been delivered in neighbouring towns under 
the auspices of this Committee. Readings in Ruskin are 
also a recent new feature of the Society's work. 

Several smaller Ruskin Societies exist in other British 
towns, and many in the United States of America. 

While these Ruskin Societies owe their origin and 
special inspiration to the writings of the master, the 
vital quality of their influence is shown in the impulse ■ 
given to follow the disinterested pursuit of culture in 
many fields, and to undertake work which is the natural 
fruit of the seed sown by John Ruskin, and not a mere \ 
attempt to copy his designs. 

The relation which members of these Ruskin Societies, 
and innumerable scattered disciples throughout the coun- 
try, adopt towards their avowed master, has been ex- 
pressed with excellent felicity by the Secretary of one of 
these Societies in a private letter, which I have permission 
to quote : " We like to regard ourselves as truth-seekers, 
and in all our study and work together we have never felt 
any reason to doubt the wisdom of putting our full trust 
and confidence in Mr. Ruskin, as not merely a great 
and noble teacher, but as the teacher who has seen 
clearly into the causes of social chaos, and pointed out 
for us the true principles of healthful and noble national 
life. Gentler in the use of his power than Carlyle, as 
clear in vision, with an appeal that reaches the heart 
with greater force, we have good hope that his life-work 
will be an ever-increasing influence for good in pro- 
moting all social movements." 



INDEX. 



f«A Joy for Ever," 53, ill, 251 

JAbbeydale, 309-310 
[Abstinence, 159-160 
|" Acceptant capacity," 109-110, 

lAcland, Henry, 26, 306 
(Agriculture, 70, 172, 180, 182, 230, 

235 
Allen, 299 
Anarchy, 143 
Angelico, 45 
Architecture, 35; the poetry of, 

3 6 > 47, 5 6 

Aristocracy, 183, 186 

Aristotle, 176 

Arnold, Matthew, 24, 32, 233, 266 

Arrows of the Chace, 45, 152, 164, 
195, 285 

Art, essential truths of, 37 ; con- 
ventionalism in, 38 ; idealism in, 
40; fine arts, 177 

Austin, 31 

Authority, 202 

Bacon, 163 

Baker, Mr. G., 309 

Bargains, the nature of, 149 

Barrow, 44 

Bastiat, 122 

Bentham, 30, 31 

Bible, early instruction in, 13, 14 

Biology, 117 

Birmingham, Ruskin Society, 349 

Bishop, 188 

Booth, Charles, 335 

Bossuet, 23, 163 

Browning, 276 

Brownlow, Lady, 322 



Burne- Jones, 31 
Byron, 24, 30, 31, 32 
Byronism, 32 

Cairnes, J. E., 150 
Capital, 136, 137, 159 
Captains of Industry, 61, 214 
Carlyle, 44, 48, 51, 53, 131, 176, 

197, 202, 206, 221, 230 
Carpaccio, 316 
Carpenter, Edward, 237 
Catholic Church, 31 
Cellini, 177 

Celtic qualities in Ruskin, 1 1 
Charity Organisation, 212 
Chaucer, 271 
Cheapness, 147 
Christchurch, 23 
Christian Socialism, 31 
Christianity, 199 
City, the, 246 
Class distinctions, 175 
Claude, 38 
Cobbett, 30 
Cobden, 30 
Collingwood, "Life and Work of 

John Ruskin," 37, 37, 46, 49, 52, 

53, 60, 228 
Commercial economy, 74, 123, 238 
Commercial life, estimate of, 22 
Commodities, demand for, 96, 1 28, 

137 
Competition, 59, 60, 124, 143, 147- 

149, 204, 218 
Compte, 293 
Comptism, 211 
Consumers' leagues, 218, 219 
Consumption of wealth, 83 



353 



354 



INDEX. 



Cook, E. T., « Studies in Ruskin," 

279, 280, 319 
Co-operative movement, 181 
Cornhill, 54 
Cost of production, 96, 110-112, 

I 3 I 

" Covetous machine," 76, 78 

Cram, 255 

Criminals, treatment of, 256-257 

Criticism, 103 

"Crown of Wild Olive," 49, 60, 

61, 208, 231, 235, 270, 342, 345 
Culture, 259 
Currency, 139-142 
Custom of the trade, 146 

Darwin, 25, 114 
Democracy, 209, 221-226 
Division of labour, 131, 234 
Drainage schemes, 70 
Drawing, 272 
Drawing school, 282 
Dutch painters, 39 

" Eagle's Nest," 34, 197, 205, 258, 
278 

"Economic man," 77, 144 

Education, physical, 177 ; moral, 
273; technical, 173, 253; State, 
171; definitions of, 251, 270; 
cram in, 255; factories for, 256; 
competition in, 256-258 ; intel- 
lectualism, 259; "culture" in, 
259 ; aesthetic, 261 ; Nature in, 
261-263 ; Spencer on, 265 ; Ar- 
nold on, 267 ; home influences in, 
267 ; three R's in, 269 ; Ruskin's 
ideal, 270-273 ; manual training, 
2 73> "gentleness and justice," 
279 

Egypt, 342 

" Elements of Drawing," 52 

" Elements of Perspective," 52 

Ely, 137 

Emerson, 132, 233, 276, 345 

Engels, 22 

Equality, 174, 205 

Ethics, 82 

" Ethics of the Dust," 315 

Fanaticism, 58 
Fawcett, 74, 122, 159 



Fechner, 101 

Feudalism, the new, 173, 304 

Fleming, A., 319 

" Fors Clavigera," 17, 18, 22, 24, 
59, 62-67, 98, 105, 134, 137, 140, 
157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 166, 167, 
169, 178, 185, 199, 209, 213, 228- 
229, 231, 236-237, 243, 244, 251, 
269, 283, 285, 288, 298, 304, 306, 
307, 308, 336, 338 

Fox, C. J., 30 

Eraser's Magazine, 56 

Frederick, 204 

Free trade, 93, 233 

Froebel, 251, 274 

Geddes, 102 

Ghirlandajo, 45 

Giotto, 45, 320 

Gladstone, 30 

Glasgow, Ruskin Society, 351 

Gothic, 42, 49 ; the nature of, 51 

Gotthelf, 286 

Government, 143 

Greece, influence in Art, 41 

Guilds, 61, 178-180, 193 

Hadley, 137 

Handicrafts, 70 

Hand-weaving, 230 

Harrison, F., 211 

Health, laws of, 172 

Hebraism, 278, 328 

Herbart, 251 

Herbert, 44 

Heme Hill, 15, 20 

Herodotus, 25 

Hero-w T orship, 204 

Hill, Miss Octavia, 298 

Holland, 343 

Home, 267 

Home Arts and Industries, 320 

Homer, 15, 17, 204, 315 

Hood, 96 

Hooker, 44 

Hugo, 36 

Huxley, 11 7-1 18 

Ibsen, 30, 203 
Idealism, 39, 47 
" Igdrasil," 134 
" Illiberal," 203 



INDEX. 



355 



"Illth,"9i, 115 

Impressionism, 30 

Intellectualism, 259 

Interest, 158 

" Intrinsic value," 101 ; cost, m 

Investor, 165 

Isaiah, 337 

Italy, 44, 45 

Jesus, 337 
Jevons, 94, 140 

Jolly, W., " Ruskin on Education," 
263 

Kirkby Lonsdale, 322 

Labour, ill, 145 

Lais s ez fair e, 92, 147 

Land as basis of reform, 64 

" Land Nationalisation," 197 

Langdale linen, 320 

Laxey, Ruskin Mill at, 318 

Liberalism, 203 

Liberty, 202 

Linen, 322 

Literature, 271 

Liverpool, Ruskin Society, 349 

Living wage, 129 

Locke, 38 

Lombroso, " The Man of Genius," 

332 
Luddite, 227 
Luther, 163 
Luxury, 177 

M'Culloch, 77 

Machinery, 132, 228, 234, 238-240, 

242 
Macugnana, 44 
Manchester, 22, 52 ; Bishop of, 

162 
" Manchesterism," 148 
Manual labour, 185 
Marmontel, 315 
Marriage, 61, 171 
Marshall, 80, 89, 138 
Marx, 195 

" Masked words," 71 
Materialism, 254 
Maurice, F. D., 52 
Mazzini, 207, 226, 306 
" Mechanic natures," 176, 236 



Mercantile economy, 86, 92, 98, 

122 
Merchant, an entirely honest, 1 1 
Mill, James, 16, 77 
Mill, J. S., 19, 20, 30, 73, 83-84, 

93, 122, 135, 206, 285 
Milton, 337 
Mineralogy, 17 
Minimum, a national, 153 
" Modern Painters," 32, 36, 37, 39, 

41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 67, 73, 203 
Mohammed, 204 
Money, essence, 163 
Money-lenders, 163, 346 
Mornex, 56 
Morris, William, 31, 132, 233, 326- 

328 
" MuneraPulveris," 56, 60,61, 100, 

105, 106, 108, 109, 113, 115, 139, 

158, 162, 175, 176, 194, 196, 206, 

209, 346 
Museum at Sheffield, 310-317 

Napoleon, 202, 204, 316 
Naturalism, 30 
Nature, study of, 35, 38 
Nicholson, 138 
Nitti, 198 

" On the Old Road," 20, 50, 57-58, 

205, 347 
Orpington, 301 
Owenites, 127 
Oxford, 279-284 
Oxford, Ruskin 's life at, 23-27 ; 

'* Movement," 26 

Pall Mall Gazette, 152, 194 

Paris, 108 

Parliament, 206 

Parsimony, doctrine of, 136 

Paul, 337 

Pedagogics, 251 

Pestalozzi, 251 

Philistines, 245 

Physical science at Oxford, 26 

Physiocrats, 157 

Plato, 25, 38, 94, 175, 176, 191 

Political economy, 51, 52, 55, 69, 

72, 74-7 S> 78, 82, 84, 85, 91, 94, 

120 



356 



INDEX. 



" Political Economy of Art," 52, 

61, in 
Population question, 61, 170; law 

of, 79 
Poussin, 38 
" Praeterita," 21, 23, 24, 26, 35, 44, 

49. 338 
Pre-Raphaelitism, 30, 47 
Production, 157 
Production of wealth, 82 
Profit, 154-157, 165, 215 
Profit-sharing, 128 
Protestantism, 46 

" Queen of the Air," 45, 96 

Railways, 229 

Realism, 38, 40 

Religion, 40, 43, 68 

Renaissance, 49 

Rent, 126; law of, 79 

Retail trade, 146, 157 

Reynolds, 73 

Ricardo, 73, 77, 79, 93 

Riches, 109; definition of, 78, 98, 
106 

Ruskin, J. J., 12 ; interest in art, 
1 5 ; Toryism, 20 ; ambition for 
son, 24 

Ruskin, John, Scotch parentage, 
12; earliest training, 13, 34; 
home life, 14 ; early love of 
Nature, 16, 34; travels in child- 
hood, 16; moral influences of 
childhood, 18; early "grapho- 
mania," 19; youthful love, 20; 
Oxford life, 25-28 ; Newdigate 
prize, 26; Literary training, 35 ; 
first publication, 35; "Modern 
Painters " begun, 37 ; spiritual 
struggles, 44 ; Continental so- 
journs, 44 ; " Pre-Raphaelitism," 
47; "The Seven Lamps of 
Architecture," 48 ; " Stones of 
Venice," 49; beginnings of so- 
cial reform, 51, 52 ; "The Polit- 
ical Economy of Art," 52 ; " Unto 
this Last," 53 ; mission of social 
reform entered, 54 ; " Munera 
Pulveris," 56; " Sesame and 
Lilies," 60; "Crown of Wild 
Olive," 60 ; "Time and Tide," 61 ; 



S8o- 



" Fors Clavigera," 62-67 ; qual- 
ifications as political economist, 
69-74 ; reform of political econ- 
omy, 95-96, 120; socialism of, 
192-198; professorship at Ox- 
ford, 279-284 ; as landlord, 298 ; 
as bookseller, 299-302 ; St. 
George's Guild, 302, etc. ; ex- 
penditure of money, 307-309 
Rydings, 318 

Schaffle, 95 

Schulze-Delitzsch, 198 

Scott, Sir Walter, 15, 271 

Senior, 74 

Sentimentalism, 99 

" Sesame and Lilies," 60, 18J 
251, 252, 254, 267, 287-2J 
^292 

ShafFesbury, 30 

Shakespeare, 269, 272 

" Sheepfolds, Notes on the Con- 
struction of," 26, 46, 205 

Sheffield, 309, 311 

Shelley, 30, 32 

Sidgwick, 138 

Sillar, W. C, 158 

Slavery, 176, 205, 208 

Smart, " A Disciple of Plato," 42, 
122 

Smith, Adam, 92, 99, 126, 130, 133, 

H3 
Smith & Elder, 300 
Social economics, 98, 102, 120 
Social reform, its paths, 29 
Socialism, 183, 192-198, 221 ; 

Christian Socialism, 199; Cath- 
olic Socialism, 198 
Society, the true, 170 
Sociology, 100, 119 
Specialisation, 233 
Spencer, Herbert, 95, 114, 265 
Spenser, 271 
St. Anthony's Bank, 351 
St. George, Guild of, 65, 302-313; 

creed, 305 ; * Master's Report," 

310 
State, meaning of, 190; machinery 

of, 218-219 
" Stones of Venice," 49, 67, 260 
Supply and demand, law of, 125, 

150 



LNDEX. 



357 



Swan, 309 
Switzerland, 229 

ITemple, W. Cowper, 307 

[Tennyson, 25, 27 

I" The Seven Lamps of Architec- 

! ture," 36, 48, 51, 73 

(Thomson, G., 318 

(Thucydides, 25 

I Time and Tide," 61, 62, 163, 169, 

I 171-172,174,175,177,181,187, 

189, 193, 202, 210, 231, 278 
iTintoret, 49, 108 
iTolstoy, 30, 132, 186, 197, 235, 

237, 326-328 
Trade Unions, 178 
|Turner, J. W., 36, 45> 280, 313 

(United States, 203 

j" Unto this Last," 53, 55, 56, 60, 67, 

1 75' 76,85, 95, 96, 98, 105, 115, 

129, 136, 137, 143, 145, 146, 150, 

152, 155, 183, 196,210,213,215, 

2 97 
I Usury, 347 

Utilitarians, 30, 31, 97, 98 
I Utopian, 38, 55 



Value, 89, 91, 96, 107, 115 
Venice, 49 * 

Veronese, 177 
Verrocchio, 316 

Wage, a fair, 151 

Wage-fund, 79 

Wagner, 31, 116 

Walkley, 311 

Wallace, A. R., 114 

War, 60, Appendix i. (341-348) 

Warrants of goods, 1 78 

Watts, G. F., 322 

Wealth, 72, 75, 84, 85, 86, 88, 

89 
Webb, " Industrial Democracy," 

129, 153 
White, W.,313, 314 
Whitehouse, J. H., 349 
Whitman, 30 
Wilson, A. J., 348 
Wordsworth, 30, 87, 261, 263 
Work, gospel of, 47, 60 
Working Man's College, 52, 309 

Xenophon, 274 



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111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



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